Winter Comet

A comet discovered late last year by an amateur Japanese astronomer -  Masayuki Iwamoto  - is preparing to make a close pass by earth on February 12th.  Officially named:  Comet C/2018 Y1 (Iwamoto) it is booking thru the night sky at a screaming 148,000 miles per hour.     

Comets are not fiery objects or to be confused with shooting stars.  They are basically big chunks of rock and ice that trace their origins to another location within our solar system and are generally believed to be the result of some sort of asteroid collision, aggregation of gas and cosmic dust or perhaps the chaos out of which our own planetary system was formed.  I suppose you would have to be there to know for sure.  In any event, they are characterized by very eccentric elliptical orbits around our sun and return at intervals of only a few years to as many as millions of years.  Whenever the icy conglomeration approaches the sun it warms and begins to release gases - a process referred to as outgassing.  This forms a type of atmosphere called a coma and from time-to-time it may also produce a tail. 

In case you are worried the errant Comet Iwamoto isn’t going to crash into earth.  The closest it will come is a distance of 28 million miles.   Nevertheless, if you have clear evening skies you can view it with a pair of binoculars as it will be closely associated with the constellations Leo and Virgo.  The best viewing opportunities should be February 11th and 12th.   

If you want to learn more and examine a celestial map of the comet by date I’d like to give a shout-out to Astro Bob.  Click on the link, pay a visit as he's got it all covered there in meticulous detail. 

Fingers-crossed for cold and clear winter skies....