Comet Leonard to make its closest approach to Earth tonight
AGENCY: DEC. 12 – Comet Leonard will make its closest approach to Earth tonight, at a distance of around 35 million kilometers.
Astronomers have discovered over 3700 comets in our Solar System, and Leonard is a typical comet that orbits the Sun at a speed of roughly 47 kilometers per second.
“This is a bright-ish comet that we see in the sky around once a year on average.” “As it gets closer, it may become visible to the naked eye, making for some interesting pictures, but for us concerned with objects that may pose a threat to Earth, this comet is thankfully rather unspectacular,” explains Marco Micheli, Astronomer in the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Near-Earth Object Coordination Centre, in a press release.
Get away from the city lights, lie down, and gaze up at the sky. A shooting star’ may be seen shredding at tremendous speed about 7:22 p.m. You might be able to view a few additional slow-moving comets with your own eyes if you’re lucky.
On December 7, the European Space Agency’s Near-Earth Object Coordination Centre released a photograph of the comet taken with the Calar Alto Schmidt telescope in Spain.
The comet was photographed as colorful streaks ranging from green to red to blue by superimposing a stack of 90 photos, each five seconds long.
“Centred around the comet’s bright nucleus, these colors come together to create a brilliant white glow of the nucleus, while the green-bluish hue around it is true-to-life, the typical color emitted by comets due to their chemical composition,” ESA added.
