Comet Catalina Coming To a Night Sky Near You (www.cbc.ca)

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday December 31, 2015 @10:36PM from the bright-light dept.

TigerNut writes: CBC is running a story on the upcoming closest approach of Comet Catalina. While the headline makes it sound like a one-night deal for the morning of January 1, the best viewing may actually occur next weekend (Jan 8-10) because the moon will not be a bright distraction at that time. The CBC reports: "Comet Catalina, which is less than 20 kilometres across, was discovered in 2013 by the Tuscon, Ariz.-based Catalina Sky Survey, which looks for potentially hazardous near-Earth objects. At first, it was thought to be a very large near-Earth asteroid. But astronomers soon realized it was actually a very long, near-parabolic orbit and observations with the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope showed 'modest cometary activity.'"

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I can see it right now by Applehu+Akbar · 2016-01-01 01:13 · Score: 5, Informative

Catalina is very easy to find right now because in the predawn sky it's right next to the bright orange star Arcturus, which is the star that the handle of the Big Dipper points to. Night after night, it will move toward the Dipper and then up the handle.