Something to see if you are driving NorthEast @3am in May

An article showing you a map locating Comet Swan, which comes into naked eye visibility as of today May 15th.

The direction to look is generally NorthEast, low towards the brightening dawn twilight…
The easiest time to find it - looks like being on May 30th when it is right next to the bright star Capella, rising in the NorthEastern sky around 3am…
It is supposedly at it’s brightest now however, in that it isn’t going to get any closer to Earth on it’s fly-by.

There’ll be no moon about at that time of the morning this week neither - so all that’s needed is a clear sky, just before first light…

The link gives you a pic showing the position each night of this month…

Been up twice now at 3am to see this, haven’t seen a thing. I now have a stiff neck and feel really drained through getting up from reading this post. When is it visible?

UKtramp:
Been up twice now at 3am to see this, haven’t seen a thing. I now have a stiff neck and feel really drained through getting up from reading this post. When is it visible?

It is visible now as a faint star that looks like a blob if you look slightly to the side. If you’ve ever seen the Andromeda Galaxy nearby - you’ll know what I mean.

The moonless nights at present - are for best viewing. Magnitude is +5.2 which is at the edge of visbility without binoculars.

If there’s a sudden brightening, or “It’s all over” because it falls to bits like disappointing Atlas Comet did - I’ll update this.

Did you see Hale Bopp back in 1997 btw? This was visible for for a year and a half well into naked eye visibility…

Comets are usually seen in the twilight part of the sky, as they tend to be brightest when approaching close to the sun…

Update for this weekend…

…Still getting brighter, and confirming Comet Atlas has now fizzled out…

Winseer:
It is visible now as a faint star that looks like a blob if you look slightly to the side. If you’ve ever seen the Andromeda Galaxy nearby - you’ll know what I mean.

That’s probably why I haven’t been able to view it then, so at present it is only visible through peripheral vision? At present the sky is so clear with a reduction in air pollution that I am contemplating purchasing a good telescope, always fancied one of the motorised types that lock onto the stars automatically. Because of where I live there is very little night light pollution so it seems a good time right now.

UKtramp:

Winseer:
It is visible now as a faint star that looks like a blob if you look slightly to the side. If you’ve ever seen the Andromeda Galaxy nearby - you’ll know what I mean.

That’s probably why I haven’t been able to view it then, so at present it is only visible through peripheral vision? At present the sky is so clear with a reduction in air pollution that I am contemplating purchasing a good telescope, always fancied one of the motorised types that lock onto the stars automatically. Because of where I live there is very little night light pollution so it seems a good time right now.

Indeed, the drop in air pollution of late - has made our skies a whole lot better for the viewing of everything…

If you’ve got binoculars already, in the same area of sky where Swan is lurking rather dimly in the background right now…

There’s the Pleiades/Seven Sisters
(pictured here with Comet Machholz moving across it - Machholz looked rather similar to Swan does right now in fact…)

Machholz Pleiades.jpg

The Haydes cluster nearby in the same constellation of Taurus - is currently swamped out by the morning twilight, as the Sun is currently moving through Taurus into Geminii by mid-june. June is the only month of the year one cannot see the constellation of Orion for the same reason - broad daylight!

On the subject of “Telescopes” - I’m often told that a reflector is better than a refractor, but it is more expensive to buy a reflector, and easier to damage one by knocking the prism out of alignment…

I’ve yet to take the plunge getting one myself, so I continue to make use of my 10x50 binoculars and 60mm telescope, where I don’t go above 114x magnication eyepiece, because it’s too dark if one starts using the 2x doubler tube attachment…

114x is plenty enough to see the Crescent of Venus, Bands of Jupiter, Titan rather than just Saturn’s Rings - but not much good for asteroid viewing, as they move out of the view too quickly!!
I never got to see the icecaps of Mars though!

See if you can go one better than me on Mars, as there’s an opposition coming on October 14th.

Jupiter on July 14th

Saturn on July 20th

Which are easily going to be the best times to look at any plant with a telescope…

From the driving angle, it’s nice when you get to park in a layby in the middle of nowhere, and see it dark enough overhead to even make out the Milky Way, which needs a moonless night, clear skies, AND low pollution both smog and lights from nearby towns…

Mid-Wales roads or Moors roads - are best!

Other stuff coming up to see - include the slim crescent moon near Venus as Evening Start - next week 22nd May.

On the evening of the 22nd May Venus and Mercury - are very close together (within two full moon’s widths - 0.9degrees), but Mercury, like Comet Swan - is very faint by comparison, and you’ll probably struggle to see it in the evening twilight… BUT if you do see what looks like a normal bright star near VERY bright Venus on the evening of 22nd - then that’s Mercury, and maybe the first time you get to see it…

Two evenings later, 24th May the two planets will have seperated a bit, but are now joined by the slim crescent moon, making a nice grouping of the three… A good view for Naked Eye, Binoculars, or Telescope alike! :slight_smile:

You don’t need to be an eagle-eyed expert to find Venus at the moment - It looms large in the evening northwestern twilight sky, like the proverbial Star of Bethlehem…
Through a telescope, you will notice it is a crescent, just like the moon… Distance of Venus is around 100 times further away than the moon, but lit by sunlight on the same side, of course…
It looks like my Venus, only bigger.

(List of upcoming events to look out for…)

Correction: The Sun is passing underneath the Pleides in the sky right now, meaning it is impossible to see the Pleides and the immediate vicinity from this country - until the end of the month.


Capella is higher up in the sky though, so altough Comet Swan is there, it is very low to the horizon, and difficult to pick out with the naked eye because of other obstructions like Twilight and Rooftops!

May 31st - Would still seem to be the best shot at seeing everything in my OP. providing it is clear of course.

Fingers crossed, may 31st it is then

The sun moves 30 degrees, or 60 widths of sun/moon right to left (apparent motion) through the zodiac constellations. In May the sun is the Aires-Taurus vicinity, June Taurus-Gemini, July Gemini-Cancer etc etc.
Any crescent moon appears in the constellations to either side of the sun, so the crescent moon of next week will be in Geminii.
Constellations of the Zodiac are about 30 degrees wide each, so the shift ends up being “one constellation per month”, with the start/end dates not being the 1st of course, as people who follow Horoscopes are well aware… There is some cross-over between Astronomy and Astrology (such as the Zodiac) - but the rest is trying to put a mathematical factor onto very-far-away celestial bodies, which will have rather limited effect upon the people of Earth beyond “Psychology”. Any such “effect” is going to be “more than zero”, just as the moon’s gravity manages to pull the seas of the world up and down twice per day. The human body is 75% water, and water in turn is 2/3rds combined/compound Hydrogen by volume. There is likely some small effect then of “changing gravity” upon the human body, which may affect behaviour patterns.
Because there are more than 12 possible permutations of “bodily water content” - we can explain away any notion that a “Horoscope for Taurus” is a “one-size fits all” thing for people who happen to be born Late April to Early May. I’m surprised that no one has done a serious medical study, where for instance Birth Dates can be cross-referenced with “body types”, especially water content - to see if there is any correlation between public health and date/place/climate of birth, for instance…

Doesn’t anyone ever wonder why it is that a super-fit individual born May 1st might live to be 90, with a chain-smoking obese person also born May 1st - also makes it to 88 years of age?
…Or why a superfit person born June 8th drops dead in their 50’s, whilst someone born December 30th who’s been an invalid their entire life - ends up living well beyond the fair-and-square “threescore and ten” years of age?

Is there anyone on here born in Q2 (April-June) of 1980, when there was massive sunspot activity? The people I know born about then - have either already died, or have serious ongoing health issues… NOT good for the generation that followed my own, and seem likely to pre-decease my own generation… Why do people get Cancer? It can’t all be about “Smoking” - or “exposure to carninogens” - can it?

Just some thoughts…

Is it near the CHOAD galaxy ■■?

ringfur:
Is it near the CHOAD galaxy ■■?

No, its between the C5 aircraft and the Chocolate Bar. :stuck_out_tongue:

Choceat.jpg

How visible is this going to be on may 31st? Is it a naked eye job or is it a telescope needed? Impressed with your knowledge of our solar system btw. I find it difficult to believe that you don’t already have one. If I knew what you knew about all of this I would certainly have one. I find the stars fascinating but have limited knowledge of astrology.

What perplexes me is the recent revelations of a 13th dragon type,astro sign that NASA apparently revealed due to an advanced telescope which shakes it up a bit in Astrology terms.I get that the Mayans were highly evolved in their science but obviously a tad lacking in the hardware.As a cancerian the new paradigm puts me firmly in the Gemini bracket which doesn’t really bother me a great deal tbh,but I seem to fit the Cancerian mould more than the twins in every respect.

UKtramp:
How visible is this going to be on may 31st? Is it a naked eye job or is it a telescope needed? Impressed with your knowledge of our solar system btw. I find it difficult to believe that you don’t already have one. If I knew what you knew about all of this I would certainly have one. I find the stars fascinating but have limited knowledge of astrology.

I have a 60mm refractor telescope, and a pair of 10x50 binoculars. The telescope is best for viewing brighter objects like Planets, whereas the Binoculars are better at seeing clusters, galaxies and comets.

Because the comet is low to the north east, actually within the morning twilight, - My suggestion of 31st may was about it being near the star Capella, which would make it very easy to find, even if you have to use binoculars ideally to get a decent image of it.

Here’s an update as of Monday Evening, 19th May. This article would seem to confirm my own observations, where I cannot see the tail (just a fuzzly blob) through the morning twilight at present.
As the comet moves further to the north however, I’m hoping for a better view once the twilight isn’t swamping it…

https://astronomynow.com/2020/05/19/see-comet-2020-f8-swan-gracing-uk-skies-tonight/

Magnitude 5.8 as the article suggests, takes it just out of naked eye visibility now, so use the 10x50s…

A bit disappointing, but there’s more comets to come later in the year. What makes any comet a “good” one is if it brightens up without falling to bits as it warms up approaching the sun…

Hale Bopp was a HUGE comet - but further away from us than the Sun is at closest approach. Despite this, it was a naked eye comet in even the brightest twilight, falling just short of being visible in broad daylight.

Schwassmann-Wachmann - has the best potential as for “later this year” imo.

This is way out in the sticks at the moment though, so don’t bother trying to look for it. You’d need Mount Palomar Observatory to view it at present!

The other “also rans” are mentioned in this article…

Astronomers are still awaiting a true “Great Comet”, that is, - one the size of Hale Bopp that actually comes here to give us a “bullet burn” astronomically speaking, (pass between the Earth and Moon, < 248,000 miles distant at closest approach) rather than pass at 100million miles distant, further than the 93million miles-away Sun. A large body made out of dry ice - wouldn’t have a tidal effect as it passed by, but a lumpy bit of rock and metal might.

Halley’s Comet in 1910 - was an “Earth Grazer”, in that Earth passed through the tail of the comet, and there was a heavy meteor shower around the world.

Mark Twain.jpg

Comet McNaught in 2007 was pretty impressive, but only if you lived “down under”, as it spent most of it’s time below the northern hemisphere’s horizon - that old “Lost in the twilight” problem again. I did get to see the end of it’s visit though, when it briefly passed into the northern sky, before receding from the Earth, the tail no longer visible in it’s full glory as it’s status as “Biggest Comet”…

Comet McNaught 2007.jpg

According to this data table, Comet McNaught was the brightest comet at Mag -6 (visible in daylight AND halfway across the sky) for the past 500 years, with the brightest one easily seen in the northern hemisphere being all the way back in 1843 according to the table

1882/Sep/01 135 1882/Sep/17 0.008 1882/Sep/16 0.99 1882/Sep/08 <-3 Great September Comet (1882 R1), 16

https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/?great_comets

Don’t forget to check out the Western Twilight on Friday Evening at dusk - Find Venus (easy at mag -4.4) and see if you can spot Mercury nearb
(Update as of May 19th)

Some fantastic links within your post, I have got into astrology in the past couple of years where my interest has grown each time I learn something new. A fascinating subject and I am soaking up knowledge of the universe like a sponge. It never ceases to amaze me, perhaps what is equally amazing is the fact that there are people like you with this knowledge sat in a truck. For myself personally, I am academically educated and hold highly regarded professional qualifications but I still use these qualifications and only dip in and out of driving when it suits. I am assuming here that you have this knowledge through being self taught? Not making light of that fact as I highly commend anyone who has this ability. I think you have possibly made a bad career choice with your wisdom. Perhaps I am wrong and you may be the same as myself but it just goes to show that it is difficult in certain circumstances to tell who is actually academic and who is not. In most cases it is an easy thing to determine. Be interesting to see if there are others on here like us.

When I was working at Brakes a couple of years back, I used to stop in a layby on a regular basis around 1am on the old A11 “six mile bottom” road (now the A1304) south of Newmarket.
(Exact position as per photo)

At night on a clear night - it is dark enough here, and other laybys over 10 miles out of town around the country. This particular layby is just about out of range of the glare (night light pollution) of nearby Cambridge - to see a good star field, especially in the Summer and Autumn months. Winter have always been the most spectacular skies in the norther hemisphere through “overdose of bright stars and constellations” such as Orion, Taurus, Geminii - which are too close to the sun’s apparent position to be seen at this time of the year in May/June. It is the fainter stuff that you need dark skies to see - that in my mind represents the more interesting stuff to look at in these multitude of dark clear nights that we’ve been having of late…

At present, you have Mars, Jupiter and Saturn in the south sky, and moving apparently closer together for their oppositions coming up later this year, at which point they are brightest and are at closest to the earth, and represent better viewing, as stated in my previous post.

Overhead, if you’ve got a good telescope (light-gathering power, rather than magnification is the measure of a “good” telescope)
You can pick out this object near the star Vega, although it will look black & white if you look at it in real-time, as it takes time exposure photography to bring out the colours…

Ring Nebula Ordinary Telescope.jpg

The Lyra starfield (below) shows you how to find this relative to Vega, which as the 5th brightest star in the sky AND overhead in the summertime - can be used to co-ordinate your way to the nearby Nebula, and also the interesting star Beta Lyrae, which you’d need a pretty powerful telescope to see if looking like THIS, a “Contact Binary”…

Beta Lyrae.png

Also, nearby and worth looking at with even a small telescope - is the twin star system Alberio which is at the end of the Northern Cross asterism (Cygnus) and is also nearly overhead in summer night skies.

Alberio double star system.jpg

Just for statistic’s sake - I’d state that there are more multi-systems in the universe with at least two stars rather than a solitary one in them - than single systems like our own Solar System.
“Tatooine” is the “Norm” rather than the “Exception” then. :stuck_out_tongue:

UKtramp:
Some fantastic links within your post, I have got into astrology in the past couple of years where my interest has grown each time I learn something new. A fascinating subject and I am soaking up knowledge of the universe like a sponge. It never ceases to amaze me, perhaps what is equally amazing is the fact that there are people like you with this knowledge sat in a truck. For myself personally, I am academically educated and hold highly regarded professional qualifications but I still use these qualifications and only dip in and out of driving when it suits. I am assuming here that you have this knowledge through being self taught? Not making light of that fact as I highly commend anyone who has this ability. I think you have possibly made a bad career choice with your wisdom. Perhaps I am wrong and you may be the same as myself but it just goes to show that it is difficult in certain circumstances to tell who is actually academic and who is not. In most cases it is an easy thing to determine. Be interesting to see if there are others on here like us.

In answer to your questions, I wanted to be a Train Driver when I was about six, an Egyptologist or Astronomer when I was a teenager, and by the time I left school, I had switched my interests at college to a Physical Sciences course, which these days happens to include “Cosmology”. My own teenage daughter is doing it for A level at the moment as well, so I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree… It wasn’t until all the Science and Chemistry plants started shutting down all over the place (Wellcome, Pfizer, ICI etc) that I decided I needed to re-train, and get a trade that would allow me to live a “normal” life of Marriage, Kids, House, etc. like my contemporaries had already managed by that point, which for me was the late 80’s. I passed my car test in 88, got a job @ RM the same year, started driving 7.5t in 1990, and finally got to go on a HGV course in 1991, never looking back after that. I’m a slow learner academically, but once it goes in - it stays in. I reckon I’ve got the better side of fate than those who qualified more highly than I ever did - but forgot it all within five years of leaving University, which I never attended…

“Never stop learning”, because when you do - you revert to “Waiting for God” if you will… :open_mouth:

I’m only self-taught in that I used to follow the Carl Sagan “Cosmos” series with great interest, even liking the acted “cinematic” history lessons behind some of the giants of Astronomy, like Kepler, Tycho, and of course Copernicus… One of my favourite “sub stories” was the one about the Japanese crabs…

I also got to be mentored by a sage of a ex-physics lecturer from Cornell University, the same one that Carl Sagan was professor at.
Among other things, he taught me how to “survive black swan events” and even prosper in them, like we are going through right now with the ongoing Coronavirus crisis…

Interesting stuff guys. I love astrology although know very little about it but have always had an interest since my youth. Have a couple of books on the subject which I must get round to reading sometime soon.
Makes a pleasant change from some of the nonsense. :laughing:

That indeed is Impressive Winseer, I love hearing other peoples life experiences, just shows how fate or a wrong decision in retrospect can alter a persons dilemma. Sometimes for the better sometimes for the worse. I too wanted to be an Egyptologist to which this day I am still completely fascinated by. I agree with your philosophy of always learning and not standing still. Once you do stop wanting to learn, then my opinion is that you have lost all hope and life has got the better of you. Like many drivers, I am sure there are those that are happy with their lot and others who are silently bitter at their lost opportunity. For me my only regret was not going to Bristol University where I secured a place at the veterinary school. Reason being, I got married young and had to find work local as I got a mortgage and it seemed the right thing to do. How wrong a decision I made. Although now I am now a consultant in a very different field.

jakethesnake:
Interesting stuff guys. I love astrology although know very little about it but have always had an interest since my youth. Have a couple of books on the subject which I must get round to reading sometime soon.
Makes a pleasant change from some of the nonsense. :laughing:

Astrology! Total nonsense in my opinion. Regards Kev.

kevmac47:

jakethesnake:
Interesting stuff guys. I love astrology although know very little about it but have always had an interest since my youth. Have a couple of books on the subject which I must get round to reading sometime soon.
Makes a pleasant change from some of the nonsense. :laughing:

Astrology! Total nonsense in my opinion. Regards Kev.

I meant astronomy not Astrology, my mistake there. I may have used the incorrect terminology. I keep calling Astronomy astrology for some reason.