"And some comets have harder lives than others, depending on how close they get to the sun. "Observing a comet multiple times over successive orbits is like taking snapshots at different stages of life," said Joseph Nuth, a senior scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. By looking for water, methane and other important compounds, astronomers get clues about how the comet is put together and where it originated in the cloud of material that surrounded the young sun as the solar system formed.īy observing the same comet more than once, astronomers can see how the object changes over time. Scientists have taken advantage of 45P's approach, making observations using powerful ground-based telescopes such as NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility to investigate the gases, dust and ice particles that are released from the comet nucleus and show up in the coma and tail. The comet will pass by our planet again in 2032 but will be much farther away – at a distance of nearly 30 million miles (about 48 million kilometers). This weekend's encounter will be the comet's closest with Earth through the end of this century. The recommendation for backyard astronomers is to use binoculars or a telescope to look for the comet several times during the coming days.ĭiscovered in 1948, 45P is a short-period comet, with an orbit that takes it around the sun and out by Jupiter about every 5-1/4 years.
#Comet 45p honda skychart full#
It is currently in the early morning eastern sky, though the full moon may make the comet more difficult to spot.
11, when it passes by at a distance of about 7.7 million miles (12.4 million kilometers), or more than roughly 30 times the distance between Earth and the moon. Comet 45P will come closest to Earth on the morning of Saturday, Feb.
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