SkySafari 5 - 46P/Wirtanen wrongly located

[Bart]

Hello All

Anyone have an idea why my SkySafari 5 app has the comet in the wrong place. Its in the general area of the sky, but 'miles' off. Puzzled. Correct date and location. Its just wrong. Anybody else have a problem with this? Thanks

Barry

[cotterless45]

Dunno, but I had a few fruitless nights . Pointing to the right area , but zilch. First thing is check is the time is set to "now". Still nothing .Then got the coordinates off 

https://theskylive.com/comets

old Nick.

[steppenwolf]

Cartes du Ciel was the same for some reason which is unusual as it is normally dead on.

[Bart]

Thanks gents. Yes, date and time was ok, I checked that again and again. 

I had deleted my skysafari6 pro a while ago for space reasons on the phone. I reloaded it there this morning, and the comet was bang where it should be. Is the skysafari5 in some way outdated/unsupported? 

I loved cartes du ciel on the laptop but haven’t used it in ages  

Curious. 

[Stu]

I just checked as I have both 5 & 6 Pro installed on my phone (Samsung) and the location seems correct. Have you updated the database recently? That does sometimes correct things.

[fireballxl5]

Good old Sky Map Pro V10 was bang on as you'd expect ?

[Size9Hex]

22 hours ago, Stu said:

Have you updated the database recently?

Agree this is worth checking. For me, the comet position in SS6 was accurately enough placed to find in binoculars, but badly off in a high power eyepiece. The DB was maybe two weeks old. Updated it and the location was bang on.

[Bart]

thanks all, that was probably it. must remember that

[michael8554]

The trajectories of comets are dynamic, for instance if it starts outgasing it might change.

Update the ephemeris before blaming the software.

Michael