Comet Leonard got together with the Earth, it will be visible at the night sky until mid-December. This was reported in the press service of the Moscow Planetarium, reports TASS.
According to the press service, the comet can be observed at dusk. “It will be visible within two hours at once after sunset and in the morning from 05:00 or from 06:00 Moscow time and before sunrise,” they told in the planetarium. It is noted that the moon will not interfere with the observation of the comet in the morning.
At the moment, Leonard is at a distance of 35 million kilometers from our planet, it can be seen in the constellation Snakec. “By the middle of the month, its brightness will reach + 4m with maximum convergence with the Earth and, possibly reaches + 2-3m, taking into account the effect of direct scattering, and the comet will turn into a weak object available for observations with the naked eye,” concluded in the press service .
On November 30, astronomers of the University of Maryland (USA) showed that the largest comet detected – Bernardine-Bernstein Comet (BB) with a diameter of 100 kilometers – became active away from the sun long before it was previously thought. Scientists analyzed thousands of images of the BB comet, obtained by the Space Cospace for Exoplane Tess from 2018 to 2020.