Another Comet Pan-STARRS (earthsky.org, universetoday.com)

[eppur_se_muova]

Remember the Comet Pan-STARRS that was visible in our night sky in northern spring 2013? Here is a different Comet Pan-STARRS … not as bright as the one a year ago, but currently being watched by experienced skywatchers using binoculars or a telescope. This comet is C/2012 K1 Pan-STARRS. Adam Block at Mount Lemmon Observatory captured its image on May 5.

Justin McCollum of the Houston Astronomical Society (HAS) has been observing K1 Pan-STARRS, too. The comet is now in the morning sky, but will be shift into the evening sky before reaching its conjunction with the sun on August 9. Justin wrote that the comet has had a small outburst in brightness recently:

… myself and two other astronomers at the [HAS] George Observatory … observed in both a 10? and 18? Newtonian telescopes and it appears much brighter against the Houston light dome. I would say it is currently at 7th magnitude, but its original light curve would not place it at a maximum brightness of magnitude 6.0 until September, but if this keeps up then it could get as bright as 4th magnitude [Editor's Note: in other words, visible to the eye] if it maintains the general properties of its light curve. However, it could fade out if this is just an outburst even though it is a couple of months away from reaching perihelion.

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more: http://earthsky.org/todays-image/another-comet-pan-starrs



Get Set For Comet K1 PanSTARRS: A Guide to its Spring Appearance
by David Dickinson on March 17, 2014

Get those binoculars ready: an icy interloper from the Oort cloud is about to grace the night sky.

The comet is C/2012 K1 PanSTARRS, and it’s currently just passed from the constellation Hercules into Corona Borealis and presents a good target for observers high in the sky in the hours before dawn. In fact, from our Tampa based latitude, K1 PanSTARRS is nearly at the zenith at around 6 AM local.

Observers currently place K1 PanSTARRS at magnitude +10.5 and brightening and showing a small condensed coma. Through the eyepiece, a comet at this stage will often resemble a fuzzy, unresolved globular star cluster.

And the good news is, K1 PanSTARRS will continue to brighten, headed northward through the early morning and then into the evening sky before reaching solar conjunction on August 9th, when it’ll actually pass behind the Sun for a few hours as seen from from our vantage point. We actually get two good apparitions of Comet K1 PanSTARRS: one for the northern hemisphere in the Spring and one for the southern hemisphere after it reaches perihelion and crosses south of the ecliptic plane in August.
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This actually means the comet will reach opposition twice from our Earthbound vantage point: once on April 15th, and again on November 7th. And, as is often the case, this comet arrives six months early –or late, depending how you look at it- to be a fine naked eye object. Had K1 PanSTARRS reached perihelion in January, we’d have really been in for a show, with the comet only around 0.05 Astronomical Units (about 7.7 million kilometers) from the Earth!



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more, including calendar: http://www.universetoday.com/110272/get-set-for-comet-k1-panstarrs-a-guide-to-its-spring-appearance/#ixzz31Xyyx6b3

comet database: http://cobs.si/