Comet Machholz

The comet Mach wood ( official designation C/2004 Q2) is a long- period comet, which could be observed at the turn of 2004/2005 with the naked eye.

Discovery

The comet was discovered on 27 August 2004 by Don Edward Mach wood at an apparent brightness of 11.2mag in a relatively large distance from the Sun ( 2.5 AU) and Earth (2.2 AU). There was a total of 10 comets discovery of Mach wood, since the amateur astronomer his search for comets in 1975 began.

Orbit

The comet Mach wood runs on an extremely elongated, elliptical orbit around the sun, which is inclined at 38.5 ° to the ecliptic. The sun next point on the path ( perihelion ), the comet has passed on 24 January 2005, is located between the orbits of Earth and Mars, while the sonnenfernste point ( aphelion ) around 4600 AE is from the Sun. Its closest approach to the Earth, the comet reached on 5 January 2005 at 0.35 AE.

Due to its long-drawn railway he will return to the inner solar system only in about 120,000 years.

Visibility

In December 2004 and January 2005, the comet could be conveniently viewed from the northern hemisphere of the earth. He achieved early January an apparent brightness of up to 4mag so that it was visible under dark sky without light pollution even with the naked eye. Because the comet outside the Earth's orbit moved past this, it was during its greatest brightness is not ( like many other comets ) in the twilight, but to see the night sky. The comet's tail appeared relatively short, he was seen almost axially (see web sketch).

From 7 to 9 January 2005, he moved past the Pleiades (M 45) and moved further north to the constellation Perseus. In mid-January, he appeared in binoculars with approximately the diameter of the Orion Nebula (M 42) and was even a little brighter. With the naked eye you saw a " washed-out star", visible in binoculars and the gas tail was visible. At times, could also be a short, diffuse dust tail to be recognized.