Comet Leonard could trigger meteor showers at Venus this weekend during a relatively close approach of the comet to the planet.
Officially known as comet C / 2021 A1, also known as Comet Leonard was discovered in January by astronomer Gregory J. Leonard of the Mount Lemmon Infrared Observatory in Arizona. Dens close past Venus this weekend, skywatchers provide a marker in the evening sky to help spot the comet, which is at binocular visibility from Earth and may just barely be bright enough to be visible to the naked eye under clear, dark skies.
On Venus, but the story is different. The orbits of the planet and the comet will come within 31,000 miles (50,000 km) of each other, which is equivalent to the geosynchronous satellite orbit over Earth.
It’s comet Leonard a comet once in a lifetime for stargazers as its orbit takes about 80,000 years to round the sun. If you are looking for binoculars to see planets in the sky, check out our guide to best binoculars deals and best telescope deals available now. Our best cameras for astrophotography and best lenses for astrophotography can also help you choose the best imaging equipment to spot the next comet.
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Given the thick cloud cover at Venus, this will require you to be 35 to 40 miles (55 to 60 kilometers) above the surface, where the temperature and pressure resemble Earth, Paul Byrne, a planetary. scientist at Washington University in St. Louis, which focuses on Venus, recently told Space.com.
“It’s the only other place in the solar system where room temperature and pressure conditions are present, and potentially an astronaut could stand on the railing of a gondola with a respirator on, but otherwise in shirt sleeves,” he said.
Qicheng Zhang is a planetary science graduate student at Caltech and lead author of a new paper explores the scenario, submitted July 26 to preprint server arXiv.org and submitted to Astronomical Journal.
The newspaper suggested that the best scenario for a meteor shower would occur when Venus passes through the comet’s tracks, but this would require very high activity from the comet. It’s a pretty rare scenario, but not impossible.
“If we had a positive detection of meteors on Venus from this event, it would tell us that this comet was quite active at great distances from the sun,” Zhang previously told Space.com.
Venus has only one orbiter in place: Japan Akatsuki spacecraft. But Earth, Venus and the sun can be oriented in a way so that Earth observers can see faint glimpses of comet Leonard’s debris, Zhang said. (On the contrary, a conclusion passing by Comet Siding Spring near Mars in 2014 was discovered by several spacecraft.)
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