Raise your eyes to the night sky and meet the green guest!

Raise your eyes to the night sky and meet the green guest!

Astrophotographer Alexander Vazenin received this snapshot of comet 21P from Moscow Region (Russia) on August 18, 2018

Celebrate the beginning of autumn with the arrival of a bright green comet, which will soon come close to the Sun! Comet 21P / Jacobini-Zinner will perform its closest approach to Earth on 10 September. On the same day, it will be installed in front of our star, increasing its own size and brightness, since solar radiation scatters particles from the icy surface of the object, creating a remarkable comet tail.

Many observatories will broadcast the arrival, so do not be discouraged if you do not have a powerful telescope, because the spectacle is available online. 21P is a periodic comet circling around the Sun every 6.6 years. This is the source of the Draconid meteor shower, which showered our planet every year in October, when the Earth sneaks through the trail of debris left by a comet.

The comet will approach us on September 10 to a distance of 58 million km. Already on the night of September 3, it will be 1 degree farther away from the bright star Capella in the constellation Auriga.

The comet can be found with a small telescope or binoculars, and in some places it is accessible even without devices in the form of a bright spot. Its visual value should reach 6.5-7.

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