Astrofacts

A new comet is coming to town: finally one visible by naked eye?

A new comet is coming to town: finally one visible by naked eye?

Atlas, or better say C/2019 Y4, would be a comet visible by naked-eye after long time.

The show could be on air at the end of May 2020. In this date the long wait for a "hairy one" should finally go to an end when the comet C/2019 Y4 called Atlas, will reach to perihelion. 

Obviously this prediction is not for sure: as always in this situation, it's based on some behavior, for example the "burst", when the brightness of a comet goes up very fast.

About this comet, discovered by the ATLAS survey un Hawaii on 28th December 2019 and that has already got up of 5 points of magnitude in last days, the astronomers are optimist: it should get up until a magnitude of 1 (approximately as bright as Saturn), but otherwise there are some good possibilities it reach a magnitude greater than the visible limit (on a perfect sky, with perfect eyes, you can reach the 6th magnitude)

Here the graph of prediction

mag-1.gif

Credits: Seiichi Yoshida (More details )    

Keep following to my blog for further updates in the next weeks

See you next time

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Astrofacts
Astrofacts

News, curiosity and facts about the Universe and all of its objects. Practice astronomy and photography about the night sky.

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