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Celestial News: Catch Comet Catalina this week

Jimmy Westlake/For Steamboat Today
Comet Catalina comes within 67 million miles of Earth this week, making it an easy target for binoculars and backyard telescopes. This image, taken Dec. 6 with a telephoto lens, shows the comet’s fuzzy green head and double tail. Catch it now before it leaves the solar system forever.
Courtesy Photo





Comet Catalina comes within 67 million miles of Earth this week, making it an easy target for binoculars and backyard telescopes. This image, taken Dec. 6 with a telephoto lens, shows the comet’s fuzzy green head and double tail. Catch it now before it leaves the solar system forever.

What could be the best comet of the year is closest to Earth this week and is easily visible using binoculars and small telescopes.

Comet Catalina was discovered on Halloween night 2013 by the Catalina Sky Survey telescope near Tucson, Arizona. Formally named C/2013 US10, Comet Catalina comes to us from the distant Oort comet cloud that surrounds our solar system.

Comet Catalina comes within 67 million miles of Earth this week, making it an easy target for binoculars and backyard telescopes. This image, taken Dec. 6 with a telephoto lens, shows the comet’s fuzzy green head and double tail. Catch it now before it leaves the solar system forever.

Several million years ago, an unknown disturbance nudged C/2013 US10 into a trajectory that would bring it into the inner solar system for the first time. Falling inward for a million years, it made its closest approach to the Sun, called perihelion Nov. 15, traveling at more than 100,000 miles per hour. After executing a sharp turn around the Sun, Comet Catalina is on its outbound journey and will make its closest pass by Earth on Tuesday, at a distance of 66.9 million miles.



Comet Catalina will make several noteworthy passes by other well-known celestial objects during January, making it easy to locate. Following are of some of the best events.

• 3 to 5 a.m. Friday — Rising before midnight, Comet Catalina appears only one degree to the lower left of the star Alkaid, at the end of the Big Dipper’s handle. It will be highest and easiest to spot just before dawn.



• 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. Saturday and Sunday — Comet Catalina appears about 3.4 degrees to the lower left of the famous double star, Mizar and Alcor, located at the crook in the Big Dipper’s handle. You can spot it as early as 10 p.m. Saturday, low in the northeastern sky, but the comet will appear much higher in the sky before dawn on Sunday.

• Dusk until dawn, Jan. 29 and 30 — Racing northward, Comet Catalina will pass 8.5 degrees from our North Star, Polaris, and will be up all night as it spins around the pole due to Earth’s rotation. Look about one fist width at arm’s length straight out to the right side of Polaris about 7:30 p.m. Jan. 29 and about 7 p.m. Jan. 30.

Comet Catalina should be barely visible to the unaided eye under ideal conditions, but binoculars will make it easy to spot. Look for a small, greenish fuzz ball with a short, wispy tail trailing behind.

After January, Comet Catalina will fade quickly, as it heads back out into the cold recesses of the outer solar system. Its recent slingshot around the Sun gave it enough speed to escape the solar system altogether and become an interstellar traveler, destined to wander the Milky Way galaxy forever. So, pull out those binoculars and catch Comet Catalina at its best this week.

Professor Jimmy Westlake teaches astronomy and physics at Colorado Mountain College’s Alpine Campus. His “Celestial News” column appears weekly in Steamboat Today, and his “Cosmic Moment” radio spots can be heard on local radio station KFMU. Check out Westlake’s astrophotography website at jwestlake.com.


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