103P/Hartley 2 as seen by the EPOXI spacecraft 34 days before encounter. Credit: NASA/JPL/UMD

Comet Hartley, no wait, comet 103P/Hartley 2 to more precise is out there.  Yes it’s important, I had a devil of a time finding this comet with binoculars.  It seemed I was always looking in just the wrong spot and I kept thinking “I should be able to see this”.  It turns out there is ANOTHER comet Hartley out there at least according to my Planetarium program.  Confusion ensued.

Once I figured out what was going on I went right out and found the comet both in the morning and the evening. If you have a pair of binoculars you stand a chance of seeing it – if you are not too far south of the equator and you have clear skies of course.

You have to keep a couple of things in mind.  The moon is getting brighter and will be washing out the sky, this is not going to help.  The comet isn’t exactly bright and it doesn’t look like what you might think of as a “classic comet shape”.  Hartley is almost a ghostly cloud for the lack of a better description, in fact you might not recognize it as a comet at all.  Come a couple more weeks and the EPOXI encounters the comet you will have seen the comet for yourself.  Besides comets are cool.

So how do you find it?  First the early morning is going to be your best chance considering the moon.  Sorry but that’s the way it happens to work this time around.  I would try sooner rather than later if I was you because the moon becomes more of a factor every day.

You will need to go outside and away from bright lights for a short time to acclimate your vision.  I found the comet after only a few minutes, but I have pretty dark skies.  Avoid looking at the moon because its brightness will interfere with the acclimation process.

Ready?  Now find Polaris, it’s the last star in the handle of the Little Dipper.  Got it?  Good.

Turn around and face the other way and locate Betelgeuse.  It is located in the constellation Orion and will be the reddish looking star.  You will see two reddish stars the western most one is Aldebaran (pronounced:  al – deb- ah -ron) and it is quite striking; it’s not the one you want specifically but it can help later too, as will be finding Capella which is a very bright star not quite half way on a line from Aldebaran to Polaris.

Here’s an annotated chart to help show what I am trying to explain.  Chart time 4:30 AM local on October 23 (should be valid for you too at your local time).

Ok draw a line from Polaris to Betelgeuse, the comet will be not quite halfway to Polaris from Betelgeuse along this line, either on the line or very close to it.  To help narrow it down a bit more, Look along the Polaris/Betelgeuse line (stay on that line) about half way between the corresponding to Aldebaran and Capella.

Here’s a chart for tomorrow morning (not annotated), as I was saying the moon will be less of a factor if you can look sooner rather than wait a few days.  Notice the position of the comet is slightly different as time passes.

Remember this isn’t going to look like one of the great comets, in fact you might go Huh, that’s it? Or Tom got me up for this??  HAHAHA Yep, I did.  But you can at least say you saw it.