COMET NEWS

News just in from our Comet monitoring station!

A newly found comet might become 2021’s brightest.

Astronomer Greg Leonard discovered the comet that now bears his name – C/2021 A1 (Leonard) – on January 3, 2021 at the Mount Lemmon Observatory in Arizona. Astronomers report that discovery images show a tail for the comet, suggesting we might see a nice tail as Comet Leonard draws closer to the Earth and sun. The comet is still far away, currently between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars, heading inward. It’ll reach perihelion, its closest approach to the sun, around January 3, 2022. And so we’ll have a whole year to watch this comet get brighter, and brighter!

More info from earthsky.org

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