If there is something to see, it's a great night for a meteor shower, as long you have clear skies. "If the debris had slower ejection speeds, then nothing will make it to Earth and there will be no meteors from this comet." "If the debris from SW3 was traveling more than 220 miles per hour when it separated from the comet, we might see a nice meteor shower," Cooke said in a NASA blog post. These meteors will be relatively slow-moving and somewhat dim. If we do get a meteor shower, there may be many meteors in the sky, but they will not be bright. "This is one reason why astronomers are excited." It adds that observations from Spitzer published in 2009 suggest that some of the fragments are moving fast enough. "If the fragments from were ejected with speeds greater than twice the normal speeds-fast enough to reach Earth-we might get a meteor shower," NASA says. Still, it's important to remember that there is no guarantee here. The American Meteor Society (AMS) adds that the viewing window may be short, lasting only around half an hour.
![comet tonight comet tonight](https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--XZgr_PcLWE/XsAuJ5SAuyI/AAAAAAAAFmg/Yvf0sEqN8ZUWgcCRkRmTBRw3Ti1sihi8ACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/ssd.jpg)
NASA says the best time to look will be around 1 am on the east coast and 10 pm on the west coast, with viewers in North America having the best view of the potential display. Its orbit is so long that it won't be back for a few million years.How to see the tau Herculid meteor shower Whatever happens, this visit will likely be our only chance to get acquainted with this comet. This one could suddenly become more active and brighter, or it could break apart and disappear from view altogether. Comets tend to behave unpredictably the closer they come to the sun. You can also get your hands on a telescope and start practicing spotting objects now using an app like Stellarium, which will also be able to point your lenses in the right direction as the comet comes closer.Īfter it passes us, C/2017 K2 will continue on toward perihelion on December 19, which is its closest pass by the sun, before heading back out toward deep space. To see the comet for yourself, you can look to public online observatories like the Virtual Telescope Project that will host watch parties this week. So, somewhere between the width of one and six Jupiters - that's an utterly epic trail.
![comet tonight comet tonight](https://earthsky.org/upl/2020/06/comet-lemmon-Terry-Lovejoy-sq-e1591351350835.jpeg)
Early observations suggest the trail of dust and gases behind C/2017 K2 is anywhere between 81,000 and 500,000 miles (130,000 and 800,000 kilometers) across. The size of the comet's tail, or coma, is similarly massive and unclear. That means C/2017 is somewhere between just legitimately big and among the handful of biggest comets discovered so far, like Hale-Bopp and Bernardinelli-Bernstein.Ĭomet C/2017 K2 PANSTARRS imaged beautiful on the 2nd by Fritz Helmut Hemmerich.
![comet tonight comet tonight](https://clearskytonight.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/ClearSkyTonight_6318_20200720_comet-1536x1024.jpg)
There's a significant amount of uncertainty at this point around just how big the comet's nucleus is, according to NASA solar system ambassador Eddie Irrizarry and Kelly Kizer Whitt in EarthSky, with different observations suggesting a range between 11 and 100 miles (18 and 161 kilometers) wide. This will likely make it difficult to see the comet without at least a small telescope, despite its substantial stature. Even at its closest, however, it will still be farther away from us than the average distance between Earth and Mars.
![comet tonight comet tonight](https://abcnew.delaughter.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/how-to-watch-the-orionid-meteor-shower-peak-tonight.jpg)
Now, that giant space snowball is coming in for its closest pass by Earth this Thursday.Ĭomet C/2017 K2 will be at its nearest point to us on its current swing through the inner solar system on July 14.
#COMET TONIGHT ZIP#
One of the largest comets known is about to zip by our planet on the only trip through the inner solar system it will make during our lifetimes.įive years ago, the Hubble Space Telescope spotted a large comet at the farthest distance ever, as it was approaching the sun from way out between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus.