04/16/2020 – Ephemeris – Comet C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS)

One of the problems that can happen when you record programs several days before they are aired is that events can get ahead of you. Comet ATLAS is disintegrating and won’t get any brighter than it already is. This program was written and recorded before I realized that it was falling apart.

This is Bob Moler with Ephemeris for Thursday, April 16th. Today the Sun will be up for 13 hours and 33 minutes, setting at 8:29, and it will rise tomorrow at 6:54. The Moon, 2 days past last quarter, will rise at 5:05 tomorrow morning.

There’s a new comet about, which may reach naked-eye visibility next month. It is comet C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS). It was discovered three days after Christmas last year by the apocalyptic sounding Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System (ATLAS), run out of the University of Hawai’i. Despite the name of the search system the comet they snagged will not come close to the Earth, contrary to some misleading posts on social media. Comet ATLAS, yes it’s an acronym, could reach first magnitude when it’s close to the Sun at the end of May, but will be in the bright evening twilight by then. I don’t think that it can be picked up in binoculars yet. I’ll have more about it tomorrow.

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

Addendum

This image starts at 10 p.p. looking north-northwest. Also plotted was Comet PANSTARRS. I removed some of its labels that plotted over the ATLAS labels. The labels have the comet name, month-day and magnitude. Any magnitude value greater than 6.0 is invisible to the naked-eye. We were hoping that ATLAS would get a lot brighter. Click on the image to enlarge.  Created using Cartes du Ciel (Sky Charts).