If you have not been out yet to catch a glimpse of comet NEOWISE, now is the time! I have been out a few mornings this week from around 4:30-5:30am and the comet is low in the North East sky. Find a place with a clear horizon and you can easily find the comet with binoculars. It is a very stunning sight. This is the brightest comet since Hale Bopp in 1997- So get up and try to see it! --Chuck
## Note from Bob Victor###
Space.com has since corrected the captions to the two diagrams plotting the comet in morning and evening skies. I observed the comet through binoculars this morning (Wed. July 8), and could still see the tail in bright twilight, some 54 minutes before sunrise. Well worth getting up early! I arrived at the site later than planned, and would recommend you begin looking 75 to 90 minutes before sunrise, which I will do for the next 6 mornings through July 14. Look a few degrees above the horizon to the lower left of Capella in the northeast. The comet will be farther to the left each morning. On the morning of July 11, a line from Capella extended past Beta Aurigae to Capella's lower left locates the comet. While you're out any of these mornings, be sure to aim your binoculars at Venus, Aldebaran and the Hyades cluster, all within a single field of view! If you get your telescope out, check up on Venus' crescent, and Mars' South Polar Cap, which has shrunk noticeably in the last few weeks but is still obvious as a small white oval or lentil at the south end of Mars' gibbous disk. Jupiter and Saturn are then low in the southwest.
On July 14, the comet passes widely due north of the Sun, and so will be equally visible in both morning and evening skies, in NE to NNE at start of morning nautical twilight, 63 minutes before sunrise, and in NNW to NW at end of evening nautical twilight, 63 minutes after sunset. (Duration of nautical twilight as seen from the Coachella Valley.) After July 14, the comet is better seen in the evening sky, gaining elevation from night to night, but fading.
On the evening of July 18, the comet will appear below the Big Dipper and close to Iota and Kappa in Ursa Major, the close pair of stars marking the front paws of the Great Bear. Four nights later, on the evening of July 22, the comet will pass closest to Earth, at a distance of 0.69 a.u., and will appear just north of Lambda and Mu Ursae Majoris, the pair of stars marking one of the rear paws of the Bear.
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