FEBRUARY 2020 OBSERVING
Celestial Calendar by Bob King
A Comet on
the Move
Viewers in the Northern
Hemisphere have ample
opportunities to spot a comet
high in the northwestern sky.Comet PanSTARRS (C/2017 T2) hurtled past M36 in Auriga on October 28,- It’s now on course to swing by the Double Cluster in Perseus at the
end of January, then rush through Cassiopeia on its way to perihelion.
M
obile, mutable, and subject to
surprise fl uctuations. These are
some of the reasons amateurs so enjoy
observing comets. I’ve nothing against
the “fi xed” stars and deep-sky treasures
but give me a comet and I’ll follow it
anywhere. While many look like blurry
glows, once a comet grows a tail it can
become one of the most singularly
beautiful objects in the night sky.
Enter Comet PanSTARRS (C/2017
T2), discovered by the PanSTARRS 1
telescope in Hawai‘i on October 2,- It knocked around for months
— no, years — as a faint blip visible in
only the largest amateur telescopes.
Not anymore. Assuming the comet
follows its predicted brightening trend,
it should be an easy target for small
instruments this month.
Comet T2 starts the month off as a
creamy, 9.5-magnitude fuzzy patch with
a well-condensed inner coma. It’s fresh
off a close conjunction with the iconic
Double Cluster in Perseus that occurred
on January 26–28. Owners of 6-inch orlarger telescopes should have little dif-
fi culty spotting it just 1° northwest of
the glittery duo on February 1st.
From Perseus it creeps westward into
Cassiopeia and steadily brightens to
around magnitude 8.8 by month’s end.
Northern Hemisphere observers have
a corner on Comet T2 because it’s cir-Earn Loyalty
Points
48 FEBRUARY 2020 • SKY & TELESCOPE
COMET: MARTIN MOBBERLEY; FIDES: SKY PUBLISHING CORPORATIONpAsteroid 37 Fides, indicated by short lines, traveled between Atlas
and Pleione in the Pleiades on the night of November 7–8, 1967.
uThe ticks (every fi ve days) on Fides’s path are plotted for 0h UT (late
afternoon or evening of the previous date in the Americas).ASTEROID 37 FIDES, named for the Roman goddess of
loyalty, will be plying the star-poor byways of eastern
Cancer this month. Fides is a large S-type, or stony,
asteroid 108 kilometers across that spins once every
7.33 hours. Based on its unusual light curve, which dis-
plays three minima and three maxima, some astrono-
mers think it might be a binary object.
At opposition on February 2nd and brightest at mag-
nitude 10.1, Fides will slowly fade thereafter as it moves
west in retrograde, almost reaching the Beehive Star
Cluster (M44) by the end of the month.