Comet Ikeya-Zhang  

Comet Ikeya-Zhang has become (just) a naked eye comet from the British Isles, and the week of 25th - 31st March gives us our best opportunity to see this comet.

For those of you who want to look for the comet, it may be easier towards the end of the week - when the moon will be rising later - but look to the west, roughly 'down' from Perseus, at around 20 degrees above the horizon around 8.00pm, although it is of course sliding towards the horizon more every evening.  

If you can see a feint smudge around the same brightness as the Andomeda galaxy - then get your bins on it - as that is the comet!  It has a distinct blue tail, and while it is no Hyakatake or Hale-Bopp - its worth a look!

 

Here are some pictures that I took on March 28th

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Here's a view taken on March 29th - at least we can see how the comet is moving!  I'm not convinced that the slightly darker sky actually did help - I certainly couldn't get an image that shows any more detail of the tail.

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Some more shots taken on March 30th.  Again, we can see how far the comet has moved over the course of 3 nights.  The bright star above and to the right of the comet is Mirach, in the constellation of Andromeda.

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After a few murky and cloudy nights, Saturday 6th April brought us a northeasterly wind, with associated better seeing conditions.  The comet was tonight markedly easier to see with the naked eye, but sadly the tail still proved elusive to penetrate with the digicam ;-(  As the sky darkens, unfortunately the comet slides into the sodium light pollution from Didcot's streetlights!

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[Click on thumbnails for larger images]