3
$\begingroup$

I'm in the south of Sweden and just spent over an hour trying to find Neowise, but didn't see it. I live in a rural area, there are no lights nearby and there is a small hill with clear visibility between north and northeast. I went out at 00:45 (GMT+2) and came back in at 02:00, not having seen anything resembling a comet, not even with binoculars.

News outlets around here are saying everything from "Look towards the Big Dipper and you'll see it" to "Between north and north-east", or "To the west in the evening and east in the morning". Many say that it would be somewhere "down to the left of Capella". Frankly it's quite frustrating to not be able to find neither Neowise nor a surefire description of how to locate it.

This photo is taken to the north-east around 01:45 (GMT+2). Where in relation to the stars on the photo would Neowise be? The brightest one is Capella according to Sky Maps.

enter image description here

Improve this question
$\endgroup$

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
4
$\begingroup$

The comet's position changes from night to night. It was in Auriga earlier this month but is now in Ursa Major. Here is a finder chart generated by Stellarium, with cyan dots indicating the position of C/2020 F3 at 01:10 GMT+2 from July 22 to 31.

Finder chart for C/2020 F3, late July

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
2
  • $\begingroup$ Thanks! Why none of the so called "newspapers" that fill my top 20 Google search results includes a simple picture like this is beyond me... $\endgroup$
    – Magnus
    Commented Jul 22, 2020 at 8:39
  • 2
    $\begingroup$ I'm at 50 deg. N. Last night (July 23, 01:00) the comet was viable to the naked eye. My memory puts it a bit West of the the position shown above but that should not make any difference as the tail is the most noticeable. The comet was visible to the naked eye. It was much more noticeable with averted vision. It is not as bright as the brightest areas of the Milky way. A bit of cloud haze will hide it. If you can clearly see the dimer areas adjacent to the bright core of the Milky way you should see the comet. No problem with Binoculars. $\endgroup$
    – L d Bonnie
    Commented Jul 23, 2020 at 19:13

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .