{"id":63610,"date":"2018-12-13T17:36:51","date_gmt":"2018-12-14T00:36:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/christmas-comet-arrives-over-southwest-colorado-for-holidays\/"},"modified":"2018-12-14T00:36:51","modified_gmt":"2018-12-14T00:36:51","slug":"christmas-comet-arrives-over-southwest-colorado-for-holidays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/christmas-comet-arrives-over-southwest-colorado-for-holidays\/","title":{"rendered":"Christmas Comet arrives over Southwest Colorado for holidays"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=3336a9f3-c712-4d4a-b5ca-2e3bfb040c2c&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"1667\" height=\"1114\" alt=\"The Geminid meteor shower is taking place this week and next in the southern night sky.\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">The Geminid meteor shower is taking place this week and next in the southern night sky.<\/span><span class=\"credit\">Photo courtesy of NASA<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>The night sky will offer two astronomical shows this week and next.<\/p>\n<p>The Christmas Comet will fly closest to Earth in 20 years and will be visible in the southern night sky, preferably with a telescope, said Jennifer Frost, an interpretive ranger and astronomy guide with Canyons of the Ancients National Monument.<\/p>\n<p>Also the Geminid meteor shower will take place in generally the same region of the night sky.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a two-for-one night sky viewing opportunity,\u201d Frost said.<\/p>\n<p>The Christmas Comet\u2019s technical name is 46P\/Wirtanen, discovered in 1948 by Carl Wirtanen. Its 5.5-year orbit stretches out as far as Jupiter.<\/p>\n<p>The best time to view the comet and meteor shower is about 1 a.m. after the moon sets, Frost said. The comet will be closest to Earth on Dec. 16.<\/p>\n<p>Look to the south, about halfway up from the horizon, find the three stars of Orion\u2019s belt, then turn your gaze to the west a bit. The comet will look like a \u201cfuzzy ball\u201d in the Taurus constellation. The meteor shower will appear to come out of the nearby Gemini constellation.<\/p>\n<p>The meteor shower will last into next week and peak Dec. 13 and 14 at a possible rate of 100 per hour. It is best viewed with the naked eye. The comet is better seen with a telescope or binoculars than with the naked eye, Frost said.<\/p>\n<p>Taking a long exposure with a mounted camera of the comet may capture a more crisp image and reveal its tail, or coma, she said. The tail is the result of sublimation of the comet\u2019s ice into a gas as it moves through space.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Geminid meteor shower joins comet display<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":63611,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1363,829,21,13,28,60,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-63610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-astronomy","tag-canyon-of-the-ancients-national-monument","tag-cortez","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-headlines","tag-montezuma-county","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63610"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=63610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}