10/23/2013 – Ephemeris – Where are the bright planets and Comet ISON for this week?
Ephemeris for Wednesday, October 23rd. The sun will rise at 8:08. It’ll be up for 10 hours and 35 minutes, setting at 6:44. The moon, 3 days before last quarter, will rise at 10:08 this evening.
Time again to check out the bright planets. Venus is brilliant in the west southwest after sunset. It will set at 8:44 p.m. The next planetary action will have to wait till after 11 p.m. The giant planet Jupiter will rise at 11:21 p.m. in the east northeast. It’s cruising against the stars of Gemini now. It will pass due south at 6:57 a.m. Mars will rise at 3:14 a.m. also in the east northeast. Reddish Mars is below and left of the slightly brighter star Regulus in Leo now. It’s in the east at 6 a.m. Comet ISON is a bit less than half the distance below Mars that Mars is below Regulus and in line with the two. The bright moon will interfere with spotting it. My guesstimate for magnitude is about 9.5, probably visible in telescopes if the moon wasn’t out.
Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
Addendum:
Venus low in the west southwest at 7:30 p.m. on October 23, 2013. Created using Stellarium
Jupiter, Mars and the Moon with the Winter and some spring constellations at 6:30 a.m. on October 24, 2013. Created using Stellarium.
The moon’s phase the morning of October 24, 2013. Created using Stellarium.
Mars and Comet ISON daily track from October 24th to the 30th, 2013. Be sure to match Mars dates with the comet dates. Created using Cartes du Ciel (Sky Charts).
Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog 
I live near south point on the slopes of Mauna Loa on the Bgg Island of Hawaii at almost 4,000ft …….the night sky is amazing I must say. Any additional thoughts on ISON? LINKs?
You should have better weather than I for viewing Comet ISON. Here are my sources for ISON information.
http://spaceweather.com/
Contains Comet ISON news and photographs
http://www.csc.eps.harvard.edu/2012S1/
Cometary Science Archive: Comet ISON
http://scully.cfa.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/returnprepeph.cgi?d=c&o=CK12S010
Comet ISON’s orbital elements and ephemeris of positions
http://www.icq.eps.harvard.edu/CometMags.html#2012S1
Comet ISON’s Observed brightnesses
http://www.isoncampaign.org/
NASA Comet ISON Observing Campaign
http://www.aerith.net/comet/catalog/2012S1/2012S1.html
Seiichi Yoshida’s Comet ISON page
There are other sites you can google: Bad Astronomy, Universe Today, and space.com.
The program I use for finder charts is Cartes du Ciel which I link to on the blog. It’s free. I also download the extra star catalog to show stars to magnitude 12. The latest comet elements are downloaded from the Minor Planet Center from the setup menu.
Your skies are much clearer than mine. West Michigan skies are notoriously cloudy in the autumn and winter months. So I think you will have a better view.
Big** still a interesting subject of conversation this comet