Bright Comet ATLAS could blaze into view this month

[Admin]

Already visible in telescopes and high-power binoculars, the comet may be bright enough to see with the naked eye by the end of April.

Bright Comet ATLAS could blaze into view this month : Read more

 

[pete]

https://www.space.com/bright-comet-atlas-visibility-april-2020.html

Video at about 36 seconds shows the comet intersecting Earth in orbit. But if we get lucky there, it probably also narrowly misses Mercury on the way out.

 

[Hari]

I heard that it disintegrated.

 

[rod]

FYI. Yesterday I received this e-mail message "COMET ATLAS MIGHT BE BREAKING APART: New images reported today by astronomers from the University of Maryland and Caltech suggest that Comet ATLAS (C/2019 Y4) is breaking apart. This development comes on the heels of a sudden fade in the comet's brightness. If ATLAS really is disintegrating, it could spoil a widely-anticipated sky show in late May when the comet skims by the sun. Check Spaceweather.com for the full story"

 

[Jazmo1]

With all due respect to the author - and I mean that - I just have to call out his (unnecessary, and clearly impossible) claim in this and every related article of his that I have seen, associating Comet ATLAS with The Great Comet of 1844 (which may be true) alongside the statement that the 1844 comet's period was thousands of years, "taking around 6,000 years to make one complete orbital circuit." I'm fairly familiar with orbital dynamics and cannot imagine how a fragment of the 1844 comet sharing roughly the same orbit and 6000 year period could be back in less than 200 years. One or more of those "facts" just cannot be true!