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07/14/2020 – Ephemeris – Comet NEOWISE is now visible in the evening sky
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).
07/07/2020 – Ephemeris – New Comet NEOWISE (C/2020 F3) is visible in the morning
This is Ephemeris for Tuesday, July 7th. Today the Sun will be up for 15 hours and 24 minutes, setting at 9:29, and it will rise tomorrow at 6:06. The Moon, 2 days past full, will rise at 11:37 this evening.
Comet C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) is visible in the morning now, and quite bright. At 5 am in twilight it will be very low in the northeast tomorrow morning, below the bright star Capella. I’ve seen a photograph of it showing a tail. Over the next week it will be moving northward along the horizon at 5 am and fading as it goes. Then it will become visible in the evening sky next week. It is best seen in binoculars, though it can be spotted with the naked eye. One needs a low northeastern horizon. That’s the problem with comets: they’re brightest when close to the Sun, and can be seen best only when the Sun isn’t up. So that leaves morning or evening twilight, unless they are a huge comet like Hale-Bopp of 23 years ago that doesn’t get close to the Sun.
The event times given are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
Addendum
Comet NEOWISE starting at 5 am February 8, 2020. Every second date has month-day and predicted magnitude. The sky will be a bit higher each morning. Created using Cartes du Ciel (Sky Charts)
Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog 