For the first time in 160,000 years the G3 Atlas comet is visible in Australian skies. This comet was only discovered in April last year, and is being monitored by NASA.
Deciding a once in a lifetime comet was worth viewing, we headed up the the highest point in our area – apparently the best time was before 10pm, so with daylight savings meaning sunset was 8.20pm, we waited until 9pm to go comet hunting.
The Hub has a star app (point the phone at the sky and it tells you what you are looking at). He found where the comet was supposed to be, but we couldn’t see anything. It’s possible the city lights made it too hard to see, or that the very clear skies of the day meant the soft orange glow from sunset made it too light?
Anyway, it was a lovely evening so not all was lost. That was our last chance as we are now cloudy so nothing to be seen in the sky.
Below is a photo I took of the sky in the direction of the comet (it should have been above the valley in the two hills on the left horizon). The bright star is Jupiter.
This is what we’d hoped to see:
I did see Halleys Comet in 1986 (a short-period comet that comes every 75ish years (next due in Earth’s sky in 2061). Have you ever spotted a comet?