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Pan-STARRS is a groundbreaking project to survey the sky visible from Hawai`i looking for undiscovered asteroids, distant exploding stars and much more.

If you have questions about the blog please contact blog AT ps1sc.org.

Maintained by CGWW/NRD

Comet Pan-STARRS comes to the Northern Hemisphere

March 11th, 2013 by ps1scblog

Viewers in the Northen Hemisphere are just catching their first glimpses of Comet 2011/L4 Pan-STARRS. Those in the south have been able to see both it and Comet C/2012 F6 Lemon for the last few weeks but the comet’s orbit has only just put it above the horizon in the North. By coincidence, the comet has just had its closest approach to the Sun. The orbit of the comet suggests that this may be its first and perhaps only pass close to the Sun before it is flung out in to interstellar space.

Comet Pan-STARRS photographed from Australia by Terry Lovejoy.

Comet Pan-STARRS was discovered in 2011 by astronomers using the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope on Haleakala in Hawai`i. Since then astronomers have been tracking its orbit as it moves through the inner Solar System. If you are wanting to see it now, Universe Today has a nice guide on where to look.

Also Eli Bressert has put together a short video on how to locate it using planetarium software,

Finally if you are on Oahu then why not pop down to the Institute for Astronomy’s public viewing event on the 12th of March at Magic Island

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The Pan-STARRS Project is being led by the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy, and exploits the unique combination of superb observing sites and technical and scientific expertise available in Hawaii. Funding for the development of the observing system has been provided by the United States Air Force Research Laboratory. The PS1 Surveys have been made possible through contributions by the Institute for Astronomy, the University of Hawaii, the Pan-STARRS Project Office, the Max-Planck Society and its participating institutes, the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching, The Johns Hopkins University, Durham University, the University of Edinburgh, the Queen's University Belfast, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network, Incorporated, the National Central University of Taiwan, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under Grant No. NNX08AR22G issued through the Planetary Science Division of the NASA Science Mission Directorate. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the author(s), and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the PS1 Science Consortium or its member institutions.