This week, comet C/2016 U1 NEOWISE will be in the south-eastern sky shortly before dawn. Nasa is unsure exactly how large it is.
It is moving farther south each day and it will reach its closest point to the sun, inside the orbit of Mercury, on 14 January, before heading back out to the outer reaches of the solar system for an orbit lasting thousands of years.
While it will be visible from Earth, it is not considered a threat to our planet
Next month, another object, which is a blurred line between an asteroid and a comet, might also be visible.
This object was discovered by Nasa’s NEOWISE mission, the asteroid-and-comet-hunting portion of the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission, on 27 November last year.
Over the course of 4.9 Earth-years, it has travelled inward, passing under the main asteroid belt and the orbit of Mars until it will swing just inside Earth’s own orbit in February this year.
‘The trajectory of 2016 WF9 is well understood, and the object is not a threat to Earth for the foreseeable future,’ says Nasa.
What scientists do know is that 2016 WF9 is relatively large: roughly 0.3 to 0.6 miles (0.5 to 1 kilometre) across.
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(Sourced from agencies, feature image courtesy:technology.inquirer.net)
