Do comets interest you? Do you want to track comets right from your computer? Here’s a free comet tracker tool named Comets, that will help you track them online. You will not have to rely on news to view and monitor various comets. This website has all the information about 108 most interesting comets right at your fingertips. Check if a comet is visible to naked eyes, visible with binoculars, comet altitude according to location, track comet’s orbit, view rise time, set time, max altitude time, and do more.
In the following article, you will get to know about various information about a comet. You will also know how to track a comet.
It is never a bad time to View Real-Time NASA Satellite Imagery.
How To Use This Comet Tracker Website
The homepage of this website enlists comets in order of decreasing brightness. If you know the name of a comet, you can also search for it using the Search box.
Comets are listed along with a Thumbnail, Right Ascension, Declination, Magnitude, Altitude in degrees, and Type of visibility.
For each comet, there are various options which you can click on. You can either view comet information, track comet, get planetarium view, or view 3D orbit.
Here’s the visibility guide of this comet tracker. The icons appear with the comet thumbnail to show visibility status of comet. Here, you can also change the location and checkout visibility status accordingly.
How To Track A Comet On This Website
As I mentioned before, you can either view information about a comet, track it, take a planetarium view, or view its 3D orbit. Let us first see how to go about tracking a comet.
To track a comet, click on the Tracker option on the thumbnail of a comet. A similar page as showed above will be displayed. Here, you can see the current position of the comet along with previous and next positions, according to the selected location.
Live position information is also displayed here.
In the tracker window, on the top left panel, you can view live position and data of a comet. Here, you can view Right Ascension, Declination, Magnitude, Constellation, Distance from sun, Distance from Earth, and other information.
The Information page of a comet is the most resourceful one.
Here, you can view the following information about a comet:
- Sky chart and Coordinates of comet.
- Comet Rise and Set time according to your location.
- Orbital diagram of comet with respect to our solar system.
- 15 day position of comet.
- Distance from Earth on a time vs distance graph.
- Magnitude of light on a time vs magnitude graph.
- Orbital elements of comet.
The Planetarium page of a comet displays current position of the comet in the sky in real world perspective. This makes it really easy to locate the position of comet. Along with direction, position of moon, and position of stars and constellations, the comet position is displayed. You can set time and date to view comet position in future and past and even take a screenshot of comet.
The 3D orbit page of a comet is even more interesting.
This page displays the 3D orbital path of a comet around our solar system. You can zoom in and zoom out to have a good look at the orbit of comet through this comet tracker page. You can even set date to past or future to view the position of comet. This tool can be really helpful to checkout when the comet will be/was closest to Earth.
Closing Words
Comets by The Sky Live is an excellent comet tracker website for Astronomy enthusiasts to track the most interesting comets out there. Not only you can track current comet position, you can also view past and future positions along with various other information.
