It’s an exciting week ahead for amateur astronomers as a new comet is hovering around the night sky. It is fast approaching our earth and is expected to be bright enough to be visible.
“If the night sky is clear, it may be visible to the unaided eye from January 7 onwards,” says Professor A. Sakthivel, founder of Coimbatore Astronomy Club.
Named Lovejoy (after the name of Australian comet-hunter Terry Lovejoy who discovered it) the comet C/2014 Q2 enters its best viewing position in the first two weeks of January. “January 7 is the day it passes closest to earth,” Sakthivel adds.
“We might have to wait for another 8,000 years to catch a glimpse of the comet as it has a longer period of rotation,” says Annamalai. P.S., a class XII student of Kikani School. He has managed to photograph the comet on the night of January 1 at 9.16 p.m. The comet is seen as a tiny fuzzy ball through the binoculars, while one can see the brighter central core through a telescope. Comet Lovejoy is a long-period comet and is on its way into the inner solar system, a path which indicates an orbital period of roughly 11,500 years.
Sakthivel says comets hold the key to understand the origin of the solar system. They are said to be remnants of planet formation in the Solar System about 4.6 billion years ago. They look like dirty snowballs, and are composed of frozen gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, and ammonia, as well as water, and ice, in which dust particles and rocky material are embedded. “Comet Lovejoy has a greenish glow to it which is possibly because of the presence of oxygen,” he says. Annamalai, who won third prize at the recently concluded national level amateur astrophotography contest, says one has to first watch the stars and constellations to get started in astronomy.
“Once you study the night sky with your naked eye, you can upgrade yourself with binoculars and telescopes and look for deep sky objects like the butterfly cluster, Orion nebula and Andromeda galaxy, and craters of moon,” he says.
