It’s an interstellar double header.
Monday’s solar eclipse isn’t the only once-in-a-lifetime celestial event on the horizon. The explosive comet, dubbed the Mother of Dragons, will appear after dusk in the Northern Hemisphere over the next few weeks, giving stargazers plenty of time to catch a glimpse.
“The comet will become a little brighter as it approaches the sun, and should be visible to the naked eye in the western sky.” [each evening] “It’s about an hour after sunset,” said Paul Chodas, manager of the Near Earth Object Research Center, and David Farnocchia, a NASA navigation engineer. CNN By joint email.
This cosmic hailstone, called Comet 12P/Ponsbrooks, orbits the sun only once. every 71 yearsthe last solar orbit took place in 1954.
This particular object is a cryovolcano, meaning it erupts when a large amount of gas and ice accumulates and burns like a frozen Coke can.
In previous eruptions, the arctic explosion caused the coma, the cloud of gas at the comet’s center, to sprout “horns” like an intergalactic beadlebub, earning 12P the nickname “Devil’s Comet.”
Astronomers have since renamed 12P “Mother of Dragons” because recent observations showed no appendages. Created the annual “Kappa Draconid” Meteor shower.
The best time to see this comet, which is three times the size of Mount Everest, is on April 21, when it will be closest to the sun.
The Mother of Dragons will be closest to Earth in June, but it will only be visible in the southern hemisphere, so early April is the best time for northerners to catch a glimpse.
To witness the appearance of an ice ball, stargazers should camp in a sparsely populated area with a west-facing view, within an hour after sunset, when the intergalactic ice is best visible.
“You should go to a location away from city lights with an unobstructed view of the western horizon,” Chodas and Farnocchia say. “It may be difficult to spot the comet without binoculars, so we recommend using binoculars.”
Interestingly, 12P will be visible at the same time as the solar eclipse on April 8th, but astronomers advise against letting this “cast a shadow” on the long-awaited cosmic overlap.
“It should be fairly easy to spot comets and many planets during a total solar eclipse, but the main focus for those four minutes should be on the eclipse itself,” Cordas and Farnocchia declared.
