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Comet 12P bigger than Mount Everest races towards Earth

There is a once-in-a-lifetime chance for stargazers to watch a Comet the size of Mount Everest racing towards the Earth this month. Read More

Wednesday March 13, 2024 12:45 PM, ummid.com Science Desk

There is a once-in-a-lifetime chance for stargazers to watch a Comet the size of Mount Everest racing towards the Earth this month.

Officially identified as Comet 12P or Pons–Brooks, it has drawn comparisons to the Star Wars Millennium Falcon due to two “horns” that may be seen in pictures.

12P size

Comet 12P/Pons Brooks (12P), also known as the devil comet, is a 10.5-mile-wide (17 kilometers) comet that circles the Sun on a highly elliptical orbit every 71 years or so. It is a cryovolcanic, or ice volcano, comet.

This means that it occasionally erupts when solar radiation cracks open its icy shell, or nucleus, allowing it to shoot out a combination of ice and gas, known as cryomagma, into space.

When this happens, the cryomagma massively expands 12P's coma — the cloud of gas and dust surrounding the nucleus — making the comet appear much brighter for the next few days, according to space.com.

Comet 12 p visibility date

12P is expected to approach the Sun by as much as 72.5 million miles (116.8 million km) on April 21, 2024. Later on, it will make a near pass of 144 million miles (232 million km) to Earth on June 2.

However, Jessica Lee, an Astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, says that late March will be the ideal time to observe it if you're in the northern hemisphere.

The Comet 12P should be visible to the unaided eye soon. Astronomers expect that 12P/Pons-Brooks will appear to the unaided eye as a dim, star-like blob with a fuzzy tail during this near approach.

Skygazers will be reruired to look westward in the night sky to locate the Great Square of Pegasus, which consists of four stars of almost similar brightness, in order to spot Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks.

Comet 12P appearance

Meanwhile, the amateur astronomers have already begun taking pictures of the Comet with specialised telescopes. The comet is making a meandering V-shaped movement from Great Square of Pegasus towards Aries the Ram during the next three weeks.

While comet appearance and brightness are unpredictable, the public should be alert for what seems to be "an irregularly shaped dirty snowball".

“It’s predicted that this comet will reach maximum brightness for viewers in the northern hemisphere in late March,” Lee told MailOnline.

"In late March the comet will be in the constellation of Aries, which is in the western sky just after sunset. Ideally you should go somewhere with a clear view of the horizon in the west, and pick a night with clear skies.," she added.

12P after passing the Earth, will then journey back into the outer reaches of our cosmic neighborhood, where it will spend a majority of the next 70 years.

 

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