01/27/2023 – Ephemeris – Where is comet ZTF this weekend?

Here’s the next 4 nights of Comet ZTF. It is for 3 am on the dates posted, rather than moonset. Full moon is a coming, which will pretty much wipe out the comet. Then we can wait for dark skies once again. The tail rendering simply suggests the direction of the ion tail, blown away from the sun. Created using Cartes du Ciel (Sky Charts), labeled with LibreOffice Draw.

This is Ephemeris for Friday, January 27th. Today the Sun will be up for 9 hours and 36 minutes, setting at 5:44, and it will rise tomorrow at 8:06. The Moon, 1 day before first quarter, will set at 1:08 tomorrow morning. | Comet ZTF is now passing the star Kochab in the Little Dipper and is heading out to the barren wastes of Camelopardalis, the giraffe, which I’m sure not very many people have heard of because there’s no bright stars in it. The big question people have is why this comet was supposedly green. It is not particularly rare, even though the news reports I’ve seen of it and in social and main media seem to have intimated this. And they also say it comes around every 50,000 years or that it’s the only green comet and it comes every 50,000 years which is incorrect. There’s a certain amount of hype that comes with comets. They can be spectacular and they can be duds. I remember back in 1973 a large new comet was supposed to zip around the sun and be super bright called comet Kohoutek people my age might remember that. It was a pretty much dustless comet. I it’s the dust tail it really makes comets bright, not the ion tail of ionized gasses.

The astronomical event times given are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (EST, UT –5 hours). They may be different for your location.

01/24/2023 – Ephemeris – The “green” comet’s designation is C/2022 E3 (ZTF)

This is Bob Moler with Ephemeris for Tuesday, January 24th. Today the Sun will be up for 9 hours and 29 minutes, setting at 5:40, and it will rise tomorrow at 8:09. The Moon, 3 days past new, will set at 9:26 this evening.

Yesterday, I began covering new comet that’s in our skies. I didn’t mention its name. It’s got an odd one. Its designation is C/2022 E3, which means it was discovered in 2022. E means that it was in the 5th half month of the year, which puts it in early March, and three is the third object in that period. The name that goes along with it is actually the initials ZTF which stand for Zwicky Transient Facility which is actually 2 observatory complexes, one in California and the other one in Chile which looks for things that go bump in the night. Basically, things that change their brightness or movement in the short period of time. They cover the whole sky eventually and get back and see what’s changed. The facility is named after astronomer Fritz Zwicky.

The astronomical event times given are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (EST, UT –5 hours). They may be different for your location.

Addendum

The track of Comet ZTF from tonight at 9 pm to January 30, 2023. Two constellations are named. The unnamed constellation line running through the image is the tail of Draco the dragon. The red dots are galaxies, much dimmer than the comet. The depiction of the comet’s tail simply suggests the direction of the tail. Comet positions are set for 9 pm on the dates shown. For each position, the date and magnitude are shown as in “mm-dd mag”, the year is omitted. Magnitudes are very subjective.