Latest News Two Comets Will Whizz Past Earth Present Week In Closest Flyby For 246 Years

Get prepared to look up, lucky humans: Not one but two comets will fling themselves history Earth over the next two days, one of which will be the 3^rd closest comet flyby in recorded history. As report by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), these two frozen celestial spheres may be twins, in a manner of speaking.

Comet 252P/LINEAR was discovered by the Massachusetts organization of Technology’s LINEAR survey at the turn of the latest millennium. The second, P/2016 BA14, was discovered presently this year by the University of Hawaii’s PanSTARRS telescope on the island of Maui; initially consideration to be an asteroid, follow-up observations with together the University of Maryland and Lowell Observatory team with the Discovery Channel Telescope exposed its true identity as a tail-wielding comet.

252P, about 230 meters (750 feet) in length, is barreling history our planet as you read this at a coldness of 5.2 million kilometers (3.3 million miles). At half the size, BA14 will careen past at a far earlier distance of 3.5 million kilometers (2.2 million miles) tomorrow, March 22, with the time of closest approach at 2:30 p.m. GMT (10:30 a.m. EDT). This is the closest approach of a comet to Earth since Lexell's Comet approached at 2.2 million- kilometers (1.4 million miles) in 1770, according to Sky & Telescope.

The orbital paths of these two presently passing comets are remarkably similar, but is this all there is to it? Not quite. “We recognize comets are relatively fragile things,” said Paul Chodas, director of NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at JPL, in a declaration. “Perhaps through a previous pass through the inner Solar System, or throughout a distant flyby of Jupiter, a chunk that we at the present know of as BA14 strength have broken off 252P.”

(It should be noted that NASA wrongly claims that comet IRAS-Araki-Alcock in 1983 came earlier than BA14 in its statement.)

So it could be that these two were once together. The break-up of comets isn’t without precedent: Shoemaker-Levy 9, which smashed into Jupiter in 1994, was already in 21 individual pieces by the time it began colliding with the gas giant – to give just one example.

Astronomers estimation that it had been captured by Jupiter’s gravity up to 30 years earlier, and that on one approach it moved dangerously close to the planet. At this hazardously close up distance, the gravitational forces of the world were strong sufficient to rip it apart into separate fragments, which slammed into the outside over the course of five days.

It isn’t sure, however, that a huge planet’s gravitational meadow was the culprit behind the break-up of the original 252P. One more comet by the name of 73P may hold a clue, in that it is at present decayed merely by being heated by the Sun. It’s now 66 individual icy pieces, and looks set to continue contravention downward. Perhaps our local star, then, is to blame for 252P’s schism.

To see these two out of order comet fragments you’ll probably need a relatively first-class telescope. Even at the astronomically close distance of BA14’s flyby, that’s still concerning nine times the distance from Earth to the- Moon.

On the other hand, despite having a additional distant flyby, 252P is rapidly brightening as it approaches Earth, and a number of think it'll be 100 times brighter than expected. There's a chance it'll be visible to the naked -eye.

Either way, if you miss the pair this time, you’ll have to wait 150 years for their go back.