I tried to see the green comet and totally failed. It took more planning and equipment than I expected.

The author camped in Pinnacles National Park to try and see Green Comet ZTF.Morgan McFall-Johnsen

• I tried to see the famous green comet in the night sky far away from the city last weekend.

• It was a lot harder than I expected, even with advice from a pro, because I didn’t plan ahead enough.

• The moon outshined most of the stars and I couldn’t even spot the faint comet with binoculars.

Only a tiny fraction of humanity will ever see the green comet zoom past Earth this month. I tried to become one of them but it was much more difficult than I expected.

I’ve heard (and written) a lot about this comet called C/2022 E3 (ZTF) or Comet ZTF for short. The ball of frozen gas and dust returned for the first time since the Ice Age 50,000 years ago.

I was already camping in Pinnacles National Park last weekend and thought I’d try and spot the rare heavenly visitor for myself.

Pinnacles isn’t an official dark-sky sanctuary, but it’s several hours from the major cities of San Jose and San Francisco, and you can usually see plenty of stars between its volcanic cliffs.

I thought my chances were pretty good. Maybe that was my first mistake.

Pinnacles National Park is filled with volcanic rock formations.Morgan McFall-Johnsen

I’ve never tried to locate a specific object in the night sky before, so I reached out to Dan Bartlett, a California-based astrophotographer, for advice. He took beautiful photos of the comet, like this one:

Comet ZTF on January 28, 2023.Dan Bartlett

I knew I wouldn’t see anything that clearly. He set up a telescope in the mountains to get these views. But I wanted to get as close as I could without spending a ton of money.

Dan Bartlett’s setup for photographing the comet.Dan Bartlett

“It’s going to be quite large, covering almost a quarter of the field in your binoculars,” Bartlett told me in an email.

If that was the case, I figured I couldn’t overlook it.

He said binoculars were essential so I stopped at REI to purchase a pair. Following his advice and some astronomy blogs I read online, I chose a $120 pair labeled 8×42 – the first number indicates their magnification power and the second measures the diameter of the objective lenses in millimeters.

My fresh new binoculars at REI.Morgan McFall-Johnsen

Unfortunately, that would not be enough to spot the comet. I was hoping to capture at least a grainy green glow in the night sky, but I failed completely.

Finding faint objects in the sky is harder than I thought. It’s not something you can do at the last minute with little planning and no experience.

2 things I got right: dressed for the weather and downloaded a constellation app

At least I can congratulate myself on staying warm. The forecast showed it would drop to as high as 40 degrees Fahrenheit at Pinnacles and I’m cold so I packed lots of layers and a warm hat, socks and scarf.

I also grabbed foot warmers and a rechargeable hand warmer that I got for Christmas.

I refuse to get cold feet!Morgan McFall-Johnsen

I also foresaw another problem that might have sent me to my tent sooner: I have no experience locating celestial objects other than the moon and the Big Dipper. I would need to find Mars and the star Capella to identify the correct area to look for the comet.

Bartlett said Sky Safari is “without a doubt the best mobile app out there”. So I paid $4.99 to download it. The app used GPS to label constellations, planets, and stars as I moved my phone camera across the sky.

A screenshot from the app showing me where to find Mars and Capella.Sky Safari

It helped me find Mars quickly – the orange glow was an absolute clue, but it would have taken longer to scan the sky alone. Without Sky Safari I probably wouldn’t have been able to discover Capella at all.

Mistake #1: Pick a night when the moon would be bright

I figured I’d have to wake up before dawn to avoid the moon, but it turns out the moon would be in the sky until almost 7am overnight on Friday. So I might as well see the comet at a reasonable hour, Bartlett told me.

That seemed like good news as I’m not a morning person and particularly dislike waking up before the sun. But I would have been better off getting up early for a moonless dawn.

“The moon will be extremely bright and disruptive. There’s no getting around that,” Bartlett said. “It’s like choosing to watch the comet from a medium-sized city.”

The moon wasn’t quite full like in this photo from Lake Louise, Canada, but it was pretty close.Andy Clark/REUTERS

He was more right than I thought.

Forget the comet – there weren’t even that many stars visible. It was almost like I hadn’t left town. Even holding the moon at my back and giving my eyes 15 minutes to adjust, I didn’t see much. Every time I looked at the moon, my eyes reset and I had to have them adjusted again.

Thin wisps of cloud streaking across the sky probably made it worse.

Partly cloudy weather may also have helped thwart my attempts to spot comet ZTF.Morgan McFall-Johnsen

Mistake #2: Not rehearsing until I’ve lost internet

Comet ZTF should be 5 degrees north of the star Capella, which you can find by first identifying Mars. It was easy to locate Capella and look north. But what does 5 degrees mean?

I realized too late that I didn’t remember and didn’t write it down. I didn’t work at Pinnacles so I couldn’t google it. I knew the general area the comet was supposed to be in, but not how big or small that area was. So I searched far and wide in Capella hoping to hit the jackpot.

I saw many satellites and planes but no comet.

I was staring at the stars from the ground, craning my neck too much while standing, and posed for this photo by the campfire. Courtesy of Arden Wells

One of the people who camped with me mentioned that she had heard that the comet would be between the Little Dipper and the Big Dipper. It was a huge space and I couldn’t verify it without the internet, but it was consistent with what Bartlett had told me.

This helped me pinpoint the problem: the space between Big Dipper and Capella went straight through a large halo of light surrounding the moon. I couldn’t see any stars in that bright ring.

As the night wore on, I began to lose hope. Once, my camping companions pointed out a plane whizzing past the moon, leaving a trail of condensation. They joked that it was the comet.

We joked that this plane and its contrails were the Comet Morgan McFall-Johnsen

I took a photo so I could at least show something for my efforts. Don’t be upset by that green spot in the photo – it’s just a glitch in my phone camera.

Mistake #3: I thought I could use my phone to take pictures through my binoculars

I tried to replicate a photo strategy I’ve seen in binoculars reviews and it didn’t work. Courtesy of Arden Wells

Even without comets, I enjoyed how much clearer and better resolved the stars appeared through my binoculars. I wanted to share the view and I had seen reviews online for the binoculars where people took photos by holding their cell phone cameras up to the lens.

I tried to do the same but all the images came out like this:

My phone couldn’t pick up anything through the binoculars.Morgan McFall-Johnsen

The stars didn’t appear at all. Photographing directly from the sky – without binoculars – gave slightly better results:

There are a few stars visible in the photo I took straight from the sky.Morgan McFall-Johnsen

If I had spotted the green comet, there was no way I could have captured it on my iPhone X.

The next morning, in the sunlight, I tried the technique again with a clearer subject: trees on a hill. It still didn’t work.

I wouldn’t recommend the phone-photo-through-binoculars approach. Morgan McFall-Johnsen

Having totally botched my attempt at amateur astronomy, I have even more respect for the planning, calculation, and patience that goes into it.

Who knows, maybe I looked straight at the green comet and didn’t recognize it because it was too faint. But the next time I’m looking for celestial objects, I’ll do a lot more preparation. If I can, I bring someone who knows what they’re doing.

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