A rare comet from deep space will soon appear in the night skies. Stop what you're doing and look up.
The new comet that's appeared in the night sky between the Big and Little Dippers is no visual extravaganza. To the unaided eye, it's just a small, green-tinged blob—nothing like Halley's Comet of 1910, whose tail stretched two-thirds of the way across the sky. And it will pass quickly, fading from view a week or two after reaching peak brightness in early February—a far cry from, say, Hale-Bopp's recording-breaking 15 months in the sky in 1997.
"Those little pieces, which could be the size of mountains, become the comets that we know today," says Amy Mainzer, an astronomer at the University of Arizona."We're so interested in these objects because we know things like this particular comet have to be very old, extremely old." That the comet will be visible to all, though, transcends science and self-defense."Whenever you can see one of these objects for your own self, it is a powerful reminder that we are in a living cosmos," says Mainzer."A living universe. Not static."
The scientists at Zwicky initially thought they had found an asteroid. The camera image showed a point of light, which is what asteroids look like, mainly because their long exposure to the sun's harsh rays tends to have long ago burned off any ice, gas or other"volatiles," leaving a hard surface of rock that reflects light sharply.
The Minor Planet Center posted details of the sighting on its website, so the loose community of professional and amateur astronomers could get to work, making their own observations and contributing their data. The goal was to refine estimates of the orbital path and other details."It's not good enough to just see a comet or an asteroid," says director Peter Veres."We have to determine their orbits, and that takes multiple observations.
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