The 12P/Pons-Brooks can be spotted in the night sky with binoculars or a telescope, but may even be visible to the naked eye in the coming weeks.
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No – it’s a comet that has been spotted from Earth for the first time in 71 years.
The 12P/Pons-Brooks comet is growing brighter and is now visible in the night sky – but you’ll still need binoculars or a telescope to see it.
However, it may be visible to the naked eye in the coming weeks.
It has already had several outbursts of activity, according to Dr Megan Argo, an astrophysicist at the University of Central Lancashire.
“If we’re lucky, it may have another in the next few weeks as it passes through the sky,” she said.
The comet, named after its discoverers Jean-Louis Pons and William Robert Brooks, spends most of its time in the outer reaches of the solar system, where it is very cold.
It comes back to the inner solar system – passing by Earth – every 71 years and is known as a periodic comet because of this.
Comets are mainly made up of dust, rock and ice.
Dr Argo said: “You can think of them as a bit like giant dirty snowballs.”
As the comet gets close to the sun while passing through the inner solar system, the heat causes the ice to melt straight to gas – through a process called sublimation – and some of the material is lost from the surface.
“This gas forms both a cloud around the solid nucleus of the comet – known as the coma – and a tail of material that can stretch many millions of miles in space,” Dr Argo said.
