Newly discovered comet Nishimura could be visible to naked eye this weekend

[joshuahedlund]

Whithout expected magnitude, Useless to know whether I can see it bright like Venus in the city or if maybe I might be able to make out a smudge with binoculars if I drive an hour out of town…

Found details on spaceweather.com:

> There is a bright comet in the morning sky. You probably can't see it with the naked eye, but even short exposures with digital cameras are picking up the starlike head and long tail of Comet Nishimura (C/2023 P1)

> Comet Nishimura is plunging toward the sun for a close encounter inside the orbit of Mercury on Sept. 17th. Increasing heat is causing it to brighten rapidly. Latest estimates of the comet's brightness place it at magnitude +4.5. In a dark sky, this would be visible to the unaided eye, but the morning sky is not dark. Cameras are required to observe the comet; a few seconds of exposure time are enough for a very nice picture.

[ceroxylon]

It doesn't help my existential dread when the phrasing is "the thing thing we didn't know existed a few weeks ago that would cause gnarly problems if it was closer is close enough to see with the naked eye soon!", but I will indeed be on top of a hill looking out for it.

[dylan604]

Don't look up

[rapnie]

Especially knowing that if this is a collision course extinction event type thing, only Bruce Willis and a few others get the initial phone call.

[b112]

I'll make sure to hide in my iron clad basement.

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0087799/

[DoreenMichele]

Everyone is wringing their hands about climate change steadily boiling the earth when a comet could wipe us out like it supposedly wiped out dinosaurs.

I actually sort of find this amusing, fwiw.

[BossingAround]

This is off topic, but can I just say, the universe, and its vastness, is absolutely incomprehensible and awe inspiring.

For example, the distance of earth to moon is ~380 000 kilometres (or ~238 000 miles), depending of course on the current phase of the moon's orbit. This is just about enough to stack all planets in our solar system and put them side by side between Earth and moon. The combined diameter of all planets in our solar system is ~384 000 kilometers [1].

For fun, the longest flight on earth seems to be Singapore to JFK, which covers ~15k km (or 9.5k miles), which takes us 19 hours. Just in case you want a toy scale to realize how far the big bright object you can commonly see in the sky is.

And what's crazy is when you realize that our whole galaxy is just a spec of dust in the scale of the universe.

[1] https://futurism.com/you-can-fit-all-of-the-planets-between-...

[divbzero]

I recall Hale–Bopp being incredibly clear in the sky night after night after night. What are the chances that we will see another comet of that magnitude in our lifetimes?

[pault]

Not only that, you could see it in the middle of the day. After witnessing that I understood why ancient people considered them an act of god.

[finite_depth]

Decent. Great Comets are about a once-a-generation event, give or take. A list of brighter comets of the last ~century listed by peak magnitude (lower is brighter, the limit of a typical dark sky is about +6, Hale-Bopp peaked at -1.8, the brightest star in the sky is -1.68)

* The Daylight Comet of 1910, reached a magnitude of -5

* Comet Ikeya-Seki, 1965, reached a magnitude of -10 (close to the full moon!) during the day as it grazed the Sun

* Comet West, 1976, reached a magnitude of -3

* Comet McNaught, 2008, reached -5

* Comet Lovejoy, 2011, reached -4 (but was too close to the Sun in the sky to be easily observed by humans)

So that's five comets of greater brightness than Hale-Bopp in ~100 years, or about one every 20 years. Hale-Bopp actually wasn't notable for its brightness, but for its size.

[dylan604]

After months of clear blue skies and well over 100 degree temps, it just started raining with forecast predicting a week of cloudy potential rain with a much need serious break in temps. On the weekend of a comet!! I swear the universe just doesn’t want me to see anything! Argh!!!

[psunavy03]

https://theoatmeal.com/comics/celestial_events

[dotancohen]

Every year my family goes to watch the Perseids in the desert, a drive of a few hours. This year, not one but two other families joined us... and this was the first year ever that we had clouds in our remote viewing spot. It was so cloudy that after ten o'clock we saw not a single meteor, and most of us stayed up until three to catch whatever we could, despite having work the next day.

[hef19898]

Rain killed any chance of seeing the Blue Moon for be. But the universe was nice, the clear skies meant four days straight of a clear view on the milky way, while I was lucky enough to be at place close to no light polution!

We'll see what this night brings, should be around 4-5 in the morning in my neck of the woods!

[HeyLaughingBoy]

This is what I love about HN!!!

Maybe I've been living under a rock but until this thread I hadn't even heard of this comet. But it's 4:50AM, I live on a house on top of a hill with excellent visibility to the East and I have binoculars. Just need to stay awake long enough wait for it to rise above the trees and hopefully the light pollution 10 miles away won't be an issue!

[gwill]

did you have any luck? i found that it was too faint for my 72mm telescope.

[rtpg]

Is there a website with more info about where and when I should look?

[maxbond]

https://theskylive.com/c2023p1-info

If you plug in your location you can see when it rises and sets, and the "online planetarium" can help you to orient yourself.

[tarsinge]

On iOS I use Sky Guide

[pengaru]

Neat! Maybe I'll be able to get another comet photo like when NEOWISE was visible:

https://pengaru.com/~vc/tmp/neowise.jpg

[dreamcompiler]

Sounds cool. Still not getting up at 4 am to see it.

[maxbond]

Me neither but imho it's always worth giving these things a shot for ten minutes, at whatever time it's convenient. You're often able to get a modest glimpse at a suboptimal time, which I'm pretty happy with. Often you'll see something other than what you're looking for. And worst comes to worst you took some time to look at the sky.

Last weekend I was looking in the sky for a bit, and I caught two satellites, a shooting star - and an absolutely amazing view of the new Starlink constellation, one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. Other nights I've come up totally empty. But when you spend ten minutes here or there, over the years you're bound to see some really cool stuff.

ETA: unfortunately though, I just went out to look, and I couldn't find Venus. I looked it up and it doesn't rise until the early morning. Darn!

[quickthrower2]

Yes I was spoiled by Hale-Bopp so wont settle for anything that requires planning, comet wise :-)

[Vindl]

It looks like the magnitude on Sunday morning will be around +4.90, so it'll be hard to see with the naked eye unless you can observe from a good dark-sky site.

It will brighten in the following days as it gets closer to the Sun, but we won't be able to appreciate it since it will stay below the horizon until sunrise.

[Jiro]

If you miss it you can wait for this one next year: https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/anticipating-come...

[troymc]

According to the Minor Planet Center, 25 comets have been discovered this year (for a total of 4589 known comets, some of which are "lost").

https://www.minorplanetcenter.net/

[troymc]

Bonus: a table of the brightest currently (and recently) observable comets:

https://heavens-above.com/Comets.aspx?lat=0&lng=0&loc=Unspec...

[dheera]

> offering stargazers a once-in-a-437-year chance

Why are comets all of a sudden coming by every year or two? 15 years ago I felt like seeing a comet was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity but nowadays it seems visible comets show up all the time.

[lIl-IIIl]

Probably because of this website and whatever algorithm is choosing news stories for you knows that you're interested. This comet probably won't make the news in the New York Times, for example.

[sva_]

In the article it says best chances to see it are this weekend (implying today and tomorrow), then says it'll be closest on Sep 17th, which is the following weekend. Which one is it?

[janzer]

From the article: Nishimura, which has the scientific name C/2023 P1, will pass closest to the sun on 17 September.

Closest to the sun, not earth. Also, while not an area I have much knowledge in, I believe it gets rather harder to view as the angle between it and the sun narrows.

[Vindl]

On September 17th it will rise above the horizon shortly after the Sun, making it impossible to see due to sunlight.

[thom]

Bought some image stabilising binoculars recently, admittedly on a bit of a whim but the experience is quite magical. Excited to see if they're any good for stargazing!

[exhilaration]

Can you share the model?