Hey friends in the Northern Hemisphere! As you may have heard, there's a comet about, so I made this little diagram to help you find it in the sky, because it can be hard to spot. If you're in dark enough skies you may be able to see a fuzzy dot with the naked eye, and binoculars and telescopes help, of course!
Our friend C/2022 E3 (ZTF) is on its way back out of the solar system. It passes earth tonight (Feb 2nd) and thus is at its brightest right now, but it'll continue to be (decreasingly) visible as it moves roughly towards Capella and fades out of the sky over the next few weeks.
After the moon sets (which is the best time to see it!), it'll be about 25 degrees above the horizon. Fun fact: you can measure this with your fists! Extend your arms and stack your fists on the northern horizon, and together they'll be about 20 degrees tall - the comet should be up and to the left of your top fist.
(The little hash marks in the diagram above are also about 20 degrees aka two fists apart, by the way!)
I also put together a little primer on looking at things in space with more tips I've picked up over the years. The basics are:
If you have binoculars, use them! They're literally handheld telescopes, after all
Check the forecast! Clouds are not your friend here. If you're in the US, ClearDarkSky has really excellent cloud forecasts specifically aimed at astronomers!
Get out of the city if you can! Consult a Light Pollution Map to decide what direction gets you to darkness fastest.
If you're having a hard time seeing it, try looking out of the corner of your eye! This is called "averted vision", and works because the edges of your vision are more sensitive to light/dark (at the cost of being worse at seeing color)
Comets If you get the chance, pop outside and bid farewell to this visitor before they zoom back on out to the Oort Cloud for another 50,000 years. Good luck!
