Don’t Miss This Spectacular Comet
I spotted it Saturday evening. Your chance is this week. Here’s a map and viewing instructions.
Note: Since this story first published, I’ve added photos from 10/13 and 10/14. See “Updates” below. If you’re not a Medium member, you can read the full story with this “friend link,” because the night sky should belong to everyone. — Rob
“Comets are like cats,” the astronomer and author David H. Levy has said. “They have tails, and they do precisely what they want.”
So I didn’t know what to expect Saturday evening when I took my wife out to the end of a nearby street on the outskirts of Phoenix, where there’s a clear view of the Western horizon. We arrived in time to watch the sun go down behind distant mountains. High, wispy clouds turned orange and red. Twilight settled in, and Venus emerged as a dim point of light, gradually growing brighter as daylight faded.
Venus was our guidepost. We were comet hunting, looking for an icy visitor from beyond our inner solar system.
I brought binoculars, which are a great assist for spotting dim objects. Like sophisticated smartphone cameras, binoculars grab more photons than your naked eye (or some sort of technological magic like that, which I don’t claim to understand). Whatever, the…
