Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

This is Ephemeris for Tuesday, July 14th. Today the Sun will be up for 15 hours and 14 minutes, setting at 9:25, and it will rise tomorrow at 6:11. The Moon, 2 days past last quarter, will rise at 2:19 tomorrow morning.

Comet C/2020 F3 also known as NEOWISE a NASA acronym was discovered in late March by the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer or WISE spacecraft on its add-on mission. It was looking for Near Earth Objects or NEOs, hence the name NEOWISE. The comet passed its closest to the Sun on July 3rd and is now outbound on its nearly 7,000 year orbit. It’s now visible in the evening sky seen generally below the Big Dipper in the northwestern sky but much closer to the horizon as soon as it gets sufficiently dark. Binoculars will help you locate the comet which should be of naked-eye brightness for the rest of the month, though it will be fading all the way, though it now appears brighter than predicted. Also photographs make the comet appear brighter than it is to the eye.

The event times given are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.

Addendum

My photograph of Comet NEOWISE at 4:40 am Sunday morning July 12, 2020 over the west arm of Grand Traverse Bay south of the Discovery Pier off M22. (For non-Michigander astronomers M22 is not the globular star cluster in Sagittarius, but a very scenic Michigan state road.) Click on the image to enlarge.

Comet NEOWISE in the evening for July 14, 2020 to July 31, 2020. The horizon is for July 14th at 11 p.m. Click on the image to enlarge. Created using Cartes du Ciel (Sky Chart).