I looked for the comet at 02:30 EST on 02/03/2023. Honestly unsure if I saw it - squatting on a hillside with a binoculars and stellarium-web.org in my lap, and I triangulated its position between Capella, Muscida (the head of Ursa Major), and Mirfak. According to the star map it’s right over 21 Camelopardalis right now from my location, so maybe they were indistinguishable from each other. And its neighbours seem to align with the quadrant of stars (clockwise: HD 38284, 17 Camelopardalis, 21 Camelopardalis, 31 Camelopardalis ?) forming a squat rhombus I kept landing on when I aimed the binoculars where I thought ZTF would be.
But now it is 03:30 and I’ve been reading about those stars and their apparent visual magnitudes. And I found out that 21 Camelopardalis’s apparent magnitude is 6.86, which is fairly dim and hard to see. I tried finding the magnitude of the green comet and one website recorded 4.4 for today, others were slightly higher so I’m not sure. But it should be brighter than 21 Cam until it runs away. So maybe what I saw was the comet. Or maybe I am full of shit and misread the map and misnavigated the sky. I will be in a darker location before it leaves us so I’ll keep looking.
Regardless!! I did not know any of these stars before tonight. Nor did I know how many more faint stars you can see with binoculars. Next time I am under a dark sky I’ll peek at the milky way through binocs and experience a strong emotion. The temporary resident of our sky has taught me things about the permanent ones, and that’s a worthy gain. n_n
now view on a dark theme for a comet socializing with stars:
