Comet Lulin - Beginning of February

There is a comet in the morning skies which is within the reach of anyone with a telescope. This is the first bright comet which has wandered into the inner solar system since I became interested in astronomy again.

I first picked up Lulin when it was just above the left two stars of the fan of three stars above Scorpio. (Scorpio is one of the few constellations that I think looks like its name sake.) It has now moved further up in the sky and is approaching one of the brighter stars in Libra. The comet is moving faster and faster against the starry background as it approaches earth on its way back out from the sun.

Just the other day, I did a drawing of the comet. Here is the diagram showing where the comet was that morning:

And here is a drawing from the eyepiece of my telescope. Everything in the telescope is reversed, up for down and left for right. If I turn the drawing around, it would look like a binocular view (which is right side up and correct left and right.)


By the by, the way I made these drawings was to make a drawing with white paper. I made the stars very black with a Sharpie marker and the rest of the writing and drawing was done with a pencil. I took a photograph of the drawing and then used Microsoft Paint to reverse the colors. It is a simple way to make drawings which are correct for black and white.

The motion of this comet is somewhat unusual in that it is traveling in the plane of the planets, but backwards. That is, while all the planets and most comets are traveling around the sun one direction, Lulin is bucking all that traffic. There is still some debate about why this might be, and I will be interested in seeing how the astronomy community comes to an understanding of this unusual comet.

I saw a very nice photograph of the comet on the Astronomy Picture of the Day site this morning. It clearly showed the dust trail on one side of the comet (it was on the left) while the particle trail was being streamed out in the opposite direction (toward the right) beyond the comet.

I have observed the comet from my Helotes backyard a number of times with my 10 inch reflector. I have not been able to see the comet with binoculars from there yet. When I was up near Fredericksburg early Saturday morning, I thought that Lulin was getting brighter, and with the dark skies there I was able to see the comet with binoculars.

The last time I went outdoors to see a comet was Halley's comet back in the mid 1980s. That comet was an easy visual one. There have been a number of very nice visual comets since then, but I was involved in other hobbies and projects and never took the time to find them. Given that, it has been fun to follow this comet through the morning skies. I am hoping that it reaches naked eye visibility within the next couple weeks before it starts fading later in February.