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11/04/2013 – Ephemeris – Comet ISON shares the morning sky with Encke’s Comet
Ephemeris for Monday, November 4th. The sun will rise at 7:24. It’ll be up for 10 hours and 2 minutes, setting at 5:26. The moon, 1 day past new, will set at 6:28 this evening.
Yesterday was the peak of the Taurid meteor shower, it was lost in all the other news we had last week. But the source of the Taurid meteor shower is Encke’s Comet. Next to Halley’s Comet it’s that oldest known periodic comet with the designation 2P (Encke). It has the shortest orbit of any known comet of 3.3 years. It also happens that Encke is in the same part of the sky as Comet ISON, and currently outshines it, and if the magnitude projections are correct, and they often aren’t, especially for ISON, will outshine Comet ISON until November 19th, 9 days before ISON’s closest approach to the sun. Both comets will seem to converge for a while. In the last photograph I saw Encke didn’t have a tail, but had a large coma or head and a bright nuclear region.
Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
Addendum
Mars, Comets ISON and Encke on the morning sky for the first part of November 2013. Created using Cartes du Ciel. Click on image to enlarge.
The positions every three days also show the predicted magnitudes of the comets. ISON appears to be a magnitude dimmer. There is also a rogue position of the moon in the image. I had to allow it to display Mars’ positions.
Time change for us and an eclipse for others
Tomorrow, November 3rd in the US most states will get an extra hour by falling back to relive the 1 a.m. to 2 a.m. hour, when we reach 2 a.m. daylight time. We now spend most of our time in daylight “saving” savings time than in standard time. My locating in the western lower peninsula of Michigan are in the eastern time zone, whose time meridian runs through Philadelphia near the east coast. We are 43 minutes behind our time meridian in standard time. It’s even worse in the western part of the U.P. (Upper Peninsula). It’s bad enough up there so the western counties have defected to the central time zone. Daylight “Savings” Time or “Crazy time” as coined by one G. Michael Ross puts my location at one hour 43 minutes behind the time meridian, which at this moment is somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean.
Tomorrow morning also there will be a hybrid solar eclipse, one that starts and ends as an annular or ring eclipse and who’s central path becomes a total eclipse. Here’s the eclipse map and description from NASA.
Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog 