18km comet passes ‘close’ to Earth this Thursday (14)

This Thursday (14) comet C/2017 K2 (PANSTARRS) will come as close to our planet as possible – but anyone who thinks it will happen in our neighborhood is wrong. This star is one of the most distant active comets ever seen and will reach about 270 million kilometers from here.

The information was published in a statement by the National Observatory (ON).

Professional and amateur astronomers from around the world look forward to your passage. Although the object is invisible to the naked eye, it can be found with small telescopes and even telescopes thanks to the size of its luminosity.

The southern hemisphere of the planet, including most of Brazil, will be privileged at that time. Here the comet should be visible all night.

Anyone who wants to find it should look northwest at 00:09 and look for it among the stars of the Ophiuchus constellation.

HE Deep Sky ProjectGathering scientific backers, he made some images of the comet. See the post below:

Discovery of C/2017 K2 (PANSTARRS)

The comet is made of frozen gases, rock, and dust. As it approaches the sun and enters hotter regions, the material on its surface evaporates and becomes active. It is this phenomenon that also creates the famous tails.

K2 is estimated to have a total length of 18 km, with an impressive length of its tail reaching 800,000 km. K2 was discovered by the Hubble telescope in 2017 between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus.

At that time, the interplanetary rover was 2.4 billion kilometers away from us. It should now reach 270 million – almost twice the distance between the Earth and the Sun. Researchers have followed the star’s orbit closely since then.

In December of this year, K2 will also reach another key point, the perihelion, its maximum approach to the Sun. The expectation is that it gets brighter and brighter before it starts to fade away forever.