Leonard will be visible for a couple of weeks this month as
it soars past Earth, but it will be closest—just 21 million miles away—on
December 12. This week, folks living in the northern hemisphere should face
eastward and look high in the sky to see Leonard, which is expected to be the
brightest comet of the year, George Dvorsky reports for Gizmodo.
According to NASA, comets are "frozen leftovers"
of dust, rock and ice from when the solar system formed. As they near the sun
and its heat, comets form a bright, glowing head with a tail of dust and gas
that can stretch for millions of miles. Leonard will look like a round, hazy
speck in the sky with its tail pointing straight up, Joe Rao reports for
Space.com.
"The comet is in the early morning sky right at the
moment, and that means getting up very early, probably around 5 A.M. or so and
looking more or less to the northeast," astronomer Ed Krupp, the director
of the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, tells Scott Neuman for NPR.
Leonard will be hidden among the constellation of Boötes theHerdsman, near the orangey star Arcturus. Throughout the month, Leonard will
brighten and become easier to spot, but then it will slowly sink in the eastern
sky, Space.com reports.
Later in the month, the comet will start appearing a little
after sunset between the southwest horizon and Venus, NPR reports.
"The optimum time [in the evening] probably is from the
Dec. 17 on," Peter Veres, an astronomer at the Minor Planet Center at the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, tells NPR. But Leonard may be hard
to spot, so "you will need to be in a dark environment, far from the
city."
But in early January, Leonard will disappear from view for
residents of the northern hemisphere. This year will likely be the last time
humans ever catch a glimpse this comet, Popular Science reports.
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