Eclipse Day Comet Pons-Brooks! Favorite photos here
Originally published by EarthSky.
Have you seen Comet Pons-Brooks yet? This fuzzy ball of ice and dust is making its way toward the sun. Its closest approach to the sun will be on April 21. So it’ll be near the sun in our sky on eclipse day, April 8. Read about seeing the comet on eclipse day here. With the help of binoculars or a telescope, you can currently spot this comet in the evening sky now, in the northwest shortly after sunset. It’s been getting brighter! It might also become visible under dark skies to the unaided eye!
If you don’t live near dark skies or are battling clouds, you can see the comet right here, in beautiful images from the EarthSky community.
Comet Pons-Brooks and the Andromeda galaxy
Currently, the comet is hanging out in the constellation Andromeda. It appeared near the Andromeda galaxy in our sky, and astrophotographers captured some great shots of them together!
Will you see Comet Pons-Brooks during the eclipse?
Comet Pons-Brooks visits the inner solar system every 71 years. Its next perihelion (when it’s closest to the sun) will be on April 21, 2024. That will put the comet fairly close to the sun during the total solar eclipse of April 8, 2024. But will you see the comet during the eclipse? And should you even try to look for it?
More images of the comet and galaxy
More images of the comet
Bottom line: Have you seen Comet Pons-Brooks already? If not, here are some beautiful images from our talented community of photographers. Enjoy them!
Rocket Launches can sometimes be seen in Garrett County. Especially those from Wallops Island.
Originally published by Spaceflight Now, and Time and Date.
March
March 4: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch another batch of second-generation Starlink V2 Mini internet satellites. The Falcon 9’s first stage booster will land on the droneship, ‘A Shortfall of Gravitas’ in the Atlantic Ocean.
March 10: Dark nights a few days before and after the Moon reaches its New Moon phase at 09:00 UTC on March 10 are the best nights to do some night sky watching
March 20: A Rocket Lab Electron rocket will launch its first mission for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) from Launch Complex 2 at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The NROL-123 mission, also known as ‘Live and Let Fly,’ was booked as part of the NRO’s Rapid Acquisition of a Small Rocket (RASR) contract. It will launch a classified payload to orbit.
March 20: The March equinox is the first day of spring in the Northern Hemisphere and the start of fall in the Southern Hemisphere
March 22: Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks is 30 days from reaching perihelion, its closest approach to the Sun. The comet might become visible with the naked eye—it might even be visible during the total solar eclipse on April 8.
March 24: This might be a good time to try and spot Mercury: the planet appears at its farthest distance from the Sun in the evening sky.
March 24/25: The first eclipse of 2024 is a penumbral lunar eclipse of the Worm Moon visible across North and South America.
March 25: The Full Moon in March is traditionally called the Worm Moon, after earthworms that tend to appear around this time in many locations in the Northern Hemisphere. For the second month in a row, this is a Micromoon.