The giant comet, C/2017 K2 (PanSTARRS), will likely come close to Earth on Thursday. Experts said that the comet twice the size of Mount Everest can be viewed with a telescope with an aperture of at least six inches.
Giant Comet C/2017 K2 (PanSTARRS) Coordinates and Visibility Update
Hasan Al Hariri, CEO of the Dubai Astronomy Group, said that the comet is projected to have a long tail. Yet, because it is far away from Earth, it would not be visible to the naked eye. A telescope would help people see it better.
Al Hariri described how the comet is moving toward the inner solar system and will get as close as it can to Earth. Its distance would be 2.8 million kilometers away. The comet is getting brighter as it moves closer to the inner solar system. He said that it was discovered beyond the orbit of Saturn and had nucleus of 18 km wide.
Amity Dubai Satellite Ground Station and Programme Leader-Aerospace Engineering at Amity University Dubai Sarath Raj NS, Project Director, said that C/2017 K2 is currently visible in the Ophiucus constellation.
It has been departing the Oort cloud in a hyperbolic orbit for around 3 million years. NASA said that the Oort Cloud is thought to surround the rest of the solar system in a massive spherical shell. It resembles a gigantic, thick-walled bubble made of frozen space debris that can be as large as mountains.
According to SkyLive, the topocentric coordinates of comet C/2017 K2 in Dubai are Right Ascension at 17h 16m 51s and Declination at 00° 17' 38. C/2017 K2 is above Greenwich, United Kingdom's horizon. It can be seen in a height of 26° above the horizon when facing south-west. Comet C/2017 K2 is currently 272,845,792 kilometers (1.823861 astronomical units) from Earth.
Right ascension is the celestial equivalent of longitude on Earth, and declination is equivalent to geographic latitude and hour angle when projected onto the celestial sphere.
Currently, comet C/2017 K2 has a visual magnitude of 10.77 with an eccentricity of 1.00040763 and an inclination of 87.54276196°.
Giant Comet C/2017 K2 (PanSTARRS) in Movement in Space
The CFH Telescope (Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope) estimated that the nucleus of comet K2 has a radius of between 14 and 80 kilometers. However, the Hubble Space Telescope determined its nucleus' diameter to be about 18 kilometers. The comet was generating what is known as a coma, a fuzzy halo of gas that stretched 80,000 miles into space. When ice on the comet sublimates or changes from a solid to gas immediately, a coma is created.
According to Al Hassan, the comet doesn't pose a threat to Earth because it is far from the planet.
"Usually, we see comets with a nucleus of two or three kilometers or a maximum of four kilometers. So, it's unusual for a comet to have a big-sized nucleus. The heavier the comets are, the less frequent are their movements," he added.
According to NASA, when comet K2 was found between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus, nearly 1.5 billion miles from the sun, it had been traveling for millions of years from the icy depths of the solar system.
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