{"id":182480,"date":"2024-10-15T10:44:44","date_gmt":"2024-10-15T15:44:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/?p=182480"},"modified":"2024-12-16T09:41:55","modified_gmt":"2024-12-16T15:41:55","slug":"visit-by-a-dirty-snowball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/visit-by-a-dirty-snowball\/","title":{"rendered":"Visit from a dirty snowball"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The skies this weekend were mostly clear after sunset, with just a few clouds at the west horizon. Those clouds were perfectly positioned to hide Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, currently visiting our neighborhood, and I couldn’t see it, even though Venus and Arcturus were perfectly visible. Last night the sky was completely clear, and I finally could set up the tripod and get a few pictures. These were taken 45 minutes to an hour after sunset.<\/p>\n

Tsuchinshan-ATLAS is no Hale-Bopp. It was barely visible to my bespectacled eye as a faint smudge, and I would not have noticed it if I hadn’t known where to look. In a place far from city lights someone with sharp eyes might possibly spot it, but most people will need binoculars or telescopes to see it.<\/p>\n

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The comet is halfway between Venus (lower left) and Arcturus (right)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Right-click and open the images in a new window to see them at maximum size.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The skies this weekend were mostly clear after sunset, with just a few clouds at the west horizon. Those clouds were perfectly positioned to hide Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, currently visiting our neighborhood, and I couldn’t see it, even though Venus and Arcturus were perfectly visible. Last night the sky was completely clear, and I finally could … Continue reading “Visit from a dirty snowball”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-182480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photo-gallery","category-science"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xam3-Lte","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182480"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":183604,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182480\/revisions\/183604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}