Gear Up, Stargazers! ‘Brightest Comet’ to Appear in Sky on 16 Dec

Comet 46P/Wirtanen will be at its closest distance to Earth – only 7.2 million miles away – in over four centuries.

(Photo Courtesy: Twitter/@NASA_Marshall) 

In a delight of sorts for skywatchers and stargazers, a comet will soon be at its closest distance to Earth in over 400 years, NASA has said.

Comet 46P/Wirtanen will be making a close pass by Earth on Sunday, 16 December 2018, when it will be at its closest distance to the planet – only 7.2 million miles away –in over four centuries.

If it brightens enough – as many astronomers expect it to do – people may be able to see it with their naked eyes, making it the brightest comet of the past few years.

It can be seen even better with a telescope and/or binoculars.

And because Comet Wirtanen will be most visible, high in the sky in the middle of December, it will coincide with the Geminid meteor shower — traditionally one of the best of the year.

Which means, if the night skies are clear, there will reasons for serious skywatching parties.

46P/Wirtanen or the “Christmas Comet”, is a member of the Jupiter family of comets, according to NASA. Its orbit only takes it around Jupiter and back, circling the sun every 5.4 years. It’s also relatively small, with a diameter of about three-quarters of a mile.

It has been named after Astronomer Carl Wirtanen, who first identified the comet in 1948 at the Lick Observatory in San Jose, California, the United States.

Comets are either dirty snowballs or snowy dirtballs that orbit around our solar system. When those orbits take them close to the sun, some of their mass melts, with the debris flowing behind creating their tails. When that debris hits the Earth’s atmosphere, we see it as a shooting star.

There are billions, even trillions, of comets in the Oort Cloud and Kuiper Belt at the outer edge of the Solar System. Humans – who have been watching them for millennia, first in fear, then scientifically – have identified 5,253 of them.

(With inputs from NASA and the Associated Press)