{"id":3124,"date":"2019-09-05T13:51:43","date_gmt":"2019-09-05T13:51:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/?p=3124"},"modified":"2019-09-05T13:51:43","modified_gmt":"2019-09-05T13:51:43","slug":"comet-2018-w2-africano","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/comet-2018-w2-africano\/","title":{"rendered":"Comet 2018 W2 (Africano)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Comet 2018 W2 (Africano) is visible the next couple of months.<\/p>\n

It is fairly high up at the moment in Perseus.
\nIt reaches perihelion tomorrow (6th September). It is currently about 10th magnitude.<\/p>\n

So it does require a reasonably sized telescope or imaging to pick it out.<\/p>\n

The path of the comet takes it from Perseus and mid-month it moves into Andromeda.
\nOn the 17th & 18th it passes almost directly between the galaxies M31 and M33.<\/p>\n

The map below shows the path of the comet during the first half of the month.<\/p>\n<\/a>\n

On the 22nd of September it passes fairly close to the bright naked eye star Delta Andromedae.
\nThe comet should have started to fade by this time.<\/p>\n

The map below shows the comet path at the end of September into early October.
\n<\/a>
\nAround the 26th of September the comet passes through the bottom left part of The Square of Pegasus.<\/p>\n

It continues heading southwards, fading all the time.<\/p>\n

The map below shows the comet path during mid-October.
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

On the 4th of October Comet 2018 W2 (Africano) passes fairly close to Neptune.
\nIt would be good if these two objects could be captured in a single image.<\/p>\n

The last map below shows the comets path at the end of October and into November, where it should have almost faded from view and is starting to trace out a long retrograde loop.<\/p>\n

Happy Hunting.<\/p>\n<\/a>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Comet 2018 W2 (Africano) is visible the next couple of months. It is fairly high up at the moment in Perseus. It reaches perihelion tomorrow (6th September). It…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"slim_seo":{"title":"Comet 2018 W2 (Africano) - Star-Gazing","description":"Comet 2018 W2 (Africano) is visible the next couple of months. It is fairly high up at the moment in Perseus. It reaches perihelion tomorrow (6th September). It"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3124"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3125,"href":"https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3124\/revisions\/3125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}