Thursday 7 May 2020

Comet C/2020 H2 (Pruyne) makes its closest approach to the Earth.

Comet C/2020 H2 (Pruyne) will make its closest approach to the Earth on Friday 8 May 2020, reaching a distance of 0.66 AU from the Earth (66% of the distance between the Earth and the Sun, or 98 197 000 km). At this distance the comet will be not naked eye visible, having a magnitude of 13.6, (roughly the same as Uranus' moon Titania), in the Constellation of Andromeda, which is better observed from the Northern Hemisphere.

Comet C/2020 H2 (Pruyne) observed on 27 April 2020 from the El Sauce Observatory in Chile. The image is a composite of 55 exposures, each lasting 10 seconds. The comet is the circular object at the centre of the image; the elongate objects are stars that have moved over the course of the data collection. Ernesto Guido/Marco Rocchetto/Adriano Valvasori/Telescope Live/Comets & Asteroids - Small Bodies of the Solar System.

C/2020 H2 (Pruyne) was discovered on 27 April 2020 by Theodore Pruyne of the the University of Arizona's Catalina Sky Survey, which is located in the Catalina Mountains north of Tucson, using the Survey's 0.68-m Schmidt telescope. The designation C/2020 H2 (Pruyne) implies that it was the second comet discovered in the second half of April 2020 (period 2020 H), and that it was discovered by Pruyne.

The orbital trajectory and current position of C/2020 H2 (Pruyne).  The Sky Live 3D Solar System Simulator.

C/2020 H2 (Pruyne) is a Parabolic Comet, which is to say a comet that has been disrupted from an orbit in the Oort Cloud, and to be passing through the Inner Solar System on a parabolic orbit that will probably not bring it back again. This parabolic trajectory tilted at an angle of 125° to the plain of the Solar System, that brought it in to 0.83 AU from the Sun at perihelion (i.e. 0.83 times as far from the Sun as the planet Earth) on 27 April 2020.

See also...

https://sciencythoughts.blogspot.com/2020/05/comet-c2017-t2-panstarrs-reaches.htmlhttps://sciencythoughts.blogspot.com/2020/04/trans-neptunian-object-a2019-k6.html
https://sciencythoughts.blogspot.com/2020/02/comet-c2019-k1-atlas-makes-its-closest.htmlhttps://sciencythoughts.blogspot.com/2020/01/comet-c2010-u3-boattini-makes-its.html
https://sciencythoughts.blogspot.com/2020/01/comet-114pwiseman-skiff-reaches.htmlhttps://sciencythoughts.blogspot.com/2020/01/cyanide-gas-detected-in-coma-of.html
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