There will be bright moonlight all night from dusk to dawn from February 2nd or 3rd through the 6th. But by then moonlight will pose growing interference in the evening, with the waxing Moon setting later and later in the night. The waxing crescent Moon is not yet a problem and in any case sets around 11 pm.Ĭomet ZTF passes Kochab on the North American night January 27th and Polaris on the 29th and 30th. It's fairly well up in the north by mid-evening, depending on your latitude, and gains some altitude for the rest of the night. On the chart, the dates on the comet's track are for o h Universal Time, which falls on the evening of the previous date in North America.Īs of Wednesday night January 25-26 the comet is entering Ursa Minor near the bowl of the Little Dipper. See Bob King's article Circumpolar Comet ZTF (C/2022 E3) is Here! It has the finder chart you need as well as a table of the best observing times by date and the moonlight situation. For the last week the comet has even been dimly visible to the naked eye in a very dark, moonless sky - again, if you know the right spot to examine. The comet is in reach of binoculars even through a somewhat light-polluted sky - if you have a chart that pinpoints the location to examine each night, and if you know the constellations well enough to match the chart to the stars in your sky outdoors. This is a stack of 30 two-minute exposures he took with an 80-mm EDF refractor using "my new ZWO detector." Comet ZTF E3 imaged on January 16th by Alain Jouchoux of Boulder, Colorado. As of January 25th it's about magnitude 5.5, on its way to maybe 5.2 when brightest around the end of January and the beginning of February. Now it's finally having its best time in the sun while crossing the northern sky. Binocular Comet ZTF! Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF), or ZTF E3 for short, has been brightening ever since the automated Zwicky Transient Facility discovered it at 17th magnitude last March.
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