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Dark Sky Park: Comet Lovejoy

MARY: Each year there are many comets that visit our inner solar system (the Astronomical Almanac lists 42 anticipated in 2013) but most of them are very faint.

We've had some big news makers with Comet PANSTARRS in March and then, most recently, Comet ISON which fizzled out after it came close to the Sun on Thanksgiving Day. 

In the midst of all this excitement about these two there was a another comet discovered in September by an amateur astronomer in Australia, Terry Lovejoy. The exciting thing about Comet Lovejoy (officially named R1 Lovejoy 2013 to distinguish it from a spectacular naked-eye comet in the southern hemisphere which he discovered in 2011) is that here we have a human being observing the skies and making the discovery, not a group of machines and space telescopes.

Comets are unpredictable and that's what makes chasing them so fun and, potentially, very thrilling or really frustrating. As a storyteller what I like to look for are any significant elements that might expose the stuff of myth or legend, or even historical coincidence. 

Lovejoy was discovered near the beehive cluster in the constellation Cancer the Crab. In traditional astrology Cancer represented the rib cage, the hard outer shell protecting the soft inner organism of the heart which is the domain of Leo. But here at the center of Cancer is this cluster of stars, not distinctly visible to the naked eye but more fuzzy like the suggestion of what is to come. This, then, is quite a poetic place for a comet to be discovered. 

Lovejoy is visible in the morning sky between the handle of the Big Dipper and the bright star Arcturus. It passed closest to Earth on November 19 and then it will come closest to the Sun on Christmas Day. Some have said it is this year's Christmas star. 

So we can imagine a story unfolding, a story of love coming from the region where we witness the first beginnings of the heart in the ancient astrological sense and culminating at a visit with the Sun near the darkest time of the year when many cultures around the world celebrate the birth of inner light.