PANSTARRS will be be visible in the Northern
Hemisphere for about 15 minutes after sunset until the end of March. To see
PANSTARRS, look to the west after right after the sun goes down.
To have the best chance of viewing night sky
objects, you'll need to get as far away from local light pollution as possible.
Might I also recommend Frosty Drew in Charlestown?
On Sunday, Mar. 10, the comet made its closest approach to the sun, about 28 million miles away, which could obscure the view of PANSTARRS until today, Mar. 12, says NASA. But Dave Huestis at RI's Sycrapers stargazing club says March 13 will be the best day to have a look at the comet.
Comets like PANSTARRS come so close to the sun
that they risk breaking apart, but if they survive, they shine brightly.
Scientists say the ability to see a comet
without the aid of a telescope usually happens only once every five to 10
years. In 2013 however, sky watchers may have the opportunity to see two
comets with the naked-eye, including PANSTARRS (or Pan-STARRS) and Comet ISON,
which will be in our skies this fall.
NASA’s Near-Earth Object
(NEO) program finds and tracks objects that could approach
earth. NEO discovers these objects, characterizes a subset of them, and
predicts their paths to determine if any could be potentially hazardous to the
planet.
Although congress set a deadline of 2020 for
scientists to find 90 percent of the near-Earth objects that could cause
devastation, the program has been underfunded, reports New Jersey
Representative Rush Holt, physicist and former assistant director of the
Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.
