Posted on by Bob King

Three-tailed Comet Q1 PanSTARRS Lights Up Southern Skies

A cosmic pair extraordinaire! Comet C/2014 Q1 PanSTARRS joins the crescent Moon (overexposed here to show details of the comet) on July 18 from Australia. Credit: Terry Lovejoy

Call it the comet that squeaked by most northern skywatchers. Comet C/2014 Q1 PanSTARRS barely made an appearance at dawn in mid-June when it crept a few degrees above the northeastern horizon at dawn. Only a few determined comet watchers spotted the creature.

Two weeks later in early July it slipped into the evening and brightened to magnitude +4. But decreasing elongation from the Sun and bright twilight made it virtually impossible to see. Now it’s returned — with three tails! 

Comet C/2014 Q1 PanSTARRS looks pretty against pink dusk seen from Swan Hill, Victoria, Australia on July 15. The comet is quickly moving up from the western horizon into a darker sky. Credit: Michael Mattiazzo
Comet C/2014 Q1 PanSTARRS looks pretty against pink dusk seen from Swan Hill, Victoria, Australia on July 15. The comet is quickly moving up from the western horizon into a darker sky. Credit: Michael Mattiazzo
Comet Q1 PANSTARRS photographed at extremely low altitude just 10° from the Sun 45 minutes after sunset from Austria on July 4, 2015, with a 10-inch telescope. Credit: Michael Jaeger
Comet Q1 PANSTARRS photographed at extremely low altitude just 10° from the Sun 45 minutes after sunset from Austria on July 4, 2015, with a 10-inch telescope. Credit: Michael Jaeger

After taunting northerners, it’s finally come out of hiding, climbing into the western sky during evening twilight for observers at low and southern latitudes. C/2014 Q1 peaked at about 3rd magnitude at perihelion on July 6, when it missed the Sun by just 28 million miles (45 million km). The comet is now on a collision course with the Venus-Jupiter planet pair. Not a real collision, but the three will all be within about 7° of each other from July 21 to about the 24th.  A pair of wide-field binoculars will catch all three in the same view.

An amazing three tails are visible in this photo taken with a 200mm lens on July 15 at dusk. Credit: Michael Mattiazzo
Not one, not two but three tails are visible in this photo of C/2014 Q1 taken with a 200mm lens on July 15 at dusk. The ion or gas tail splits from the dust tail a short distance up from the comet’s head. A third broad dust tail 1° long points north (to the right and below head). See photo below for further details. Credit: Michael Mattiazzo

More striking, a sliver Moon will hover just 2.5° above the comet on Saturday the 18th, one day before its closest approach to Earth of 109.7 million miles (176.6 million km). Q1 has been fading since perihelion but not too much. Australian observers Michael Mattiazzo and Paul Camilleri pegged it at magnitude +5.2 on July 15-16. Although it wasn’t visible with the naked eye because of a bright sky, binoculars and small telescopes provided wonderful views.

C/2014 Q1 PanSTARRS photographed through visual (top) and red filters with a 300mm telephoto lens on July 14, 2015. Credit: Martin Masek
Another excellent capture. C/2014 Q1 PanSTARRS photographed through visual (top) and red filters with a 300mm telephoto lens on July 14, 2015. Credit: Martin Masek

Here’s Mattiazzo’s observation:

“The view through my 25 x 100 mm binoculars showed a lovely parabolic dust hood about half a degree to the east,” he wrote in an e-mail communication. “Photographically the comet showed three separate tails, a forked ion tail about 1.5° long. Embedded within this was the main dust tail about half a degree long to the east and an unusual feature at right angles to the main tail —  a broad “dust trail” 1° long to the north”.

Mattiazzo points out that the unusual trail, known as a Type III dust tail, indicates a massive release of dust particles around the time of perihelion. This comet got cooked!

Comet C/2014 Q1 PanSTARRS is now best seen from the southern hemisphere (Alice Springs, Australia here) during the winter months of July and August. On July 18th (shown here) the comet joins the crescent Moon, Jupiter, and Venus for a scenic gathering in the west at nightfall. Stars to magnitude 6.
Comet C/2014 Q1 PanSTARRS is best seen from the southern hemisphere during the winter months of July and August. The map shows the nightly position of the comet seen from Alice Springs, Australia facing west about an hour after sundown from July 16 – August 11. Stars to magnitude 6. Source: Chris Marriott’s SkyMap

In the coming nights, C/2014 Q1 will cool, fade and slide into a darker sky and may be glimpsed with the naked eye before moving into binoculars-only territory. It should remain an easy target for small telescopes through August. Use the map above to help you find it. For longer-term viewing, try this map.

Comet C/2014 Q1 PanSTARRS displays three remarkable tails in this photo taken on July 15, 2015. The ion or gas tail stretches to the left. The primary dust tail is bright and overlaps the gas tail. A third broad and diffuse tail juts off to the upper left of the coma. Credit: Michael Jaeger
Comet C/2014 Q1 PanSTARRS displays three remarkable tails in this photo taken on July 15, 2015. The ion or gas tail stretches to the left. The primary dust tail is bright and overlaps the gas tail. The Type III dust tail juts off to the upper left of the coma. Click for another amazing image taken July 18. Credit: Michael Jaeger

While I’m happy for our southern brothers and sisters, many of us in the north have that empty stomach feeling when it comes to bright comets. We’ve done well by C/2014 Q2 Lovejoy (still visible at magnitude +10 in the northern sky) for much of the year, but unless a bright, new comet comes flying out of nowhere, we’ll have to wait till mid-November. That’s when Comet Catalina (C/2013 US10) will hopefully jolt us out of bed at dawn with naked eye comet written all over it.