'Christmas Comet' Visible From Earth on Sunday, Here's How to See It

If you live in an area that's forecast to have clear skies tonight (Sunday, Dec. 16), you might want to bundle up and go outside to see the passing "Christmas Comet" as it makes its closest approach to the Earth in more than 70 years. 

Skywatchers may be able to see 46P/Wirtanen without a telescope, just head outside tonight and look toward the constellation Taurus, close to the Pleiades, and you should be able to spot the dim fuzzy green glow. The "Christmas Comet" will swing by Earth at a distance of 7.1 million miles, or approximately 30 times the distance between our planet and the moon. 

"This will be the closest comet Wirtanen has come to Earth for centuries and the closest it will come to Earth for centuries," said Paul Chodas, manager of the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "This could be one of the brightest comets in years, offering astronomers an important opportunity to study a comet up close with ground-based telescopes, both optical and radar."

While the brightness of comets can be difficult to predict, amateur astronomers with larger telescopes have already been able to spot Comet Wirtanen in the sky. People can also use binoculars to get a better view of the comet. 

The comet was first discovered by astronomer Carl Wirtanen in 1948 at Lick Observatory on Mt. Hamilton in Santa Clara County, California. The comet has a fairly quick orbit around the sun, swinging by Earth every 5.4 years or so - making it a "short-period" comet. Long-period comets have orbital periods that last much longer, at least 200 years or more. 



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