The comet everyone forgot about

With the ISON craze having quietened down after it disintegrated at perihelion, I haven't seen anyone here (or in the mainstream media) talking about the other bright and beautiful comet that's in the sky right now - the comet C/2013 R1 (Lovejoy). ISON stole the limelight, but Lovejoy is actually the brightest and most impressive comet right now, easily visible in binoculars. In November 1st the comet was visible to the naked eye, and became more impressive than comet ISON.

I had an opportunity to see it in binoculars a few weeks ago, it looked like a small fuzzy blob of light (I couldn't see the tail, probably because of light pollution and slightly hazy sky, like we always have in Britain).

Amateur astronomer Damian Peach has been capturing some great images of this comet. Here are a couple of the latest ones.

Jan 1st: www.damianpeach.com...


Jan 7th: www.damianpeach.com... (the dust and ion tails are now distinctly separate)


Here's the comet's beautiful tail detail, from Dec 26th: www.damianpeach.com...


More Lovejoy pictures by Damian Peach: www.damianpeach.com...

It is a popular comet in the Spaceweather.com Comet Gallery: spaceweathergallery.com...

reply to post by wildespace

I've been saddled with bad weather the last couple weeks. I had been taking some shots of Lovejoy in the pre-dawn hours though. Here's my last image of it:

Of course my equipment is no match for Damien Peach, and I also ran into twilight, but I'm hoping to get some better shots of it when the weather allows.

reply to post by wildespace


Beautiful photos of Lovejoy! Thanks for sharing!
Looking at those photos Peach took.. Suddenly I do not feel so alone

I'd actually assumed Lovejoy had gone from view now - but I see it's still mag 5.5 between Hercules and Ophiuchus

May have to have another look for it. Managed to see it through binoculars in early December - but it was just a very faint spot in the pictures I took with my camera so no point in posting them.

Comet Machholz
Jan 1, 2014

Jan 5, 2014


Source

They really are gorgeous photos... Let me ask you, is it just visible to certain parts of the world? I'm in Chicago, not too familiar with picking things out of the sky (or really know how to), but if I was given the right "area" of the sky to look at, maybe near a constellation, would I be able to see it here in the Midwest?

"You wait for one for ages, and then two come together!"


Damian Peach captured a rare occurence of two relatively bright comets in the same field of view: comets LINEAR and Lovejoy.

Two celestial wanderers pass each other - Comets Linear (top left) and Lovejoy (bottom right) have been close to each other over the past few days and i finally managed to catch them together. Both are moving apart now fairly quickly. Its certainly not often you get the chance to catch two bright comets within the same field of view - a once in a lifetime shot in this case!

www.damianpeach.com...

106mm F5 with STL-11k camera. 2 image mosaic. LRGB. L: 20mins. RGB: 3mins.

Here's a couple of excellent "gigapan" images, taken earlier by Jost Jahn:
www.gigapan.com...
www.gigapan.com...

They are the two brightest comet right now (visible in binoculars, if I'm not mistaken). www.aerith.net...

Completely off topic. I would like to ask a quesion to those taking those amazing pics. Are there really that many stars? the pic is almost completely saturated with stars!

also i live in the southern hemisphere. Is there any chance for me to view this comet?

f0xbat
Completely off topic. I would like to ask a quesion to those taking those amazing pics. Are there really that many stars? the pic is almost completely saturated with stars!

also i live in the southern hemisphere. Is there any chance for me to view this comet?

While I don't take these kind of images, I can tell you that this image is looking towards the galactic plane of the Milky Way, which has billions and billions of stars. So, yes, such images usually show a dazzling quantity of stars. This image had an exposure time of 20 minutes, that's quite long and makes lots of faint stars visible.

Comet Lovejoy, captured amongst the dense star clouds and dark nebulae of the Milky Way on March 10th, by Damian Peach.
www.damianpeach.com...


You don't see this kind of comet photo every day! Absolutely stunning!

Lovejoy has been a very beautiful (and relatively bright) comet last year, I wish more people would take notice of comets and appreciate them.

Whats the name of the comet that is due this year to quite possibly strike Mars?

There was more talk of it last year but I cant find anything lately on it.

Melbourne_Militia
Whats the name of the comet that is due this year to quite possibly strike Mars?

There was more talk of it last year but I cant find anything lately on it.

Comet C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring). It will most certainly not strike Mars, but will come within about 130,500 km (81,000 miles) on 19 October 2014, close enough to envelop Mars in its coma. This might create a strong meteor shower on Mars, and even affect the rovers and orbiters that are operating there.

Ironically, Lovejoy is currently getting LOTS of attention, but not under its true name. BPeartwatch keeps making videos about "209P/LINEAR" but he's actually showing C/2013 R1 Lovejoy in the STEREO images.

In this video I show that it's actually Lovejoy:

C/2013 R1 (Lovejoy) on April 7th against the Milky Way, by Damian Peach.
FSQ106 with STL-11k. LRGB. L:20mins. RGB:5mins.
www.damianpeach.com...



It's disappearing into the stars

Hopefully a few new comets will become a good show in binoculars this year, and maybe even one naked-eye comet (they come one a year on average).