Zero Genie

Now that the Moon is a waning crescent rising after midnight, observers in the British Isles can take advantage of at least three hours of darkness from 9pm BST to track down Comet Africano (C/2018 W2) at its closest and brightest as it speeds through the constellations of Pegasus, Pisces and Aquarius.

At 10:56 UT on 27 September, C/2018 W2 (Africano) passes just 0.494 astronomical units, or 74 million kilometres (46 million miles) from Earth. At this time the comet is moving against the stars of Pegasus at a rate of 3⅔ degrees per day, equivalent to the width of the full Moon every 3¼ hours.

Discovered almost simultaneously on 27 November 2018 by B. M. Africano with the Mount Lemmon 1.5-metre reflector and H. Groeller with the Catalina Sky Survey ‘s 0.68-m Schmidt telescope (Africano’s report was submitted just 21 minutes earlier), C/2018 W2’s integrated magnitude is currently about +9 and may peak at about +8.5 over the coming week. Note that Comet Africano lies within a binocular field of view of outermost planet Neptune on the night of 3–4 October.

Having passed perihelion (closest point to the Sun) on 5 September, don’t miss any opportunities to view C/2018 W2 because it’s visiting the inner planets on a hyperbolic trajectory, meaning that it will never return to the Sun – unless its orbit is perturbed by the gravitational influence of a body in the outer Solar System in the distant future.