It’s practically fall, which means pumpkin spice, football, and changing leaves. But before the trees turn from green to gold, there’s another natural wonder coming to town (er, Earth). Next week, stargazers will be watching for newly discovered Comet Nishimura to become visible to the naked eye.
Discovered just last month by Hideop Nishimura, an amateur astronomer in Japan, the comet will be making an appearance in the Northern Hemisphere next week. It was first spotted mid-August near the sun and is now hanging out in the constellation Leo. It’s already visible—although barely—before sunrise, and soon, it will become much easier to spot, as the half-mile-wide comet moves closer to Earth. Comets become easier to see as they move toward the sun, when an icy gas emanates from the comet’s nucleus, creating its distinctive tail.
On September 12, just before dawn, Nishimura will pass within 78 million miles of our planet, making it the best day to set up the lawn chairs. Experts recommend a good pair of binoculars for prime visibility. It will continue on its course, moving closer to the sun by September 17, then become invisible to us once more—if it even survives passing the sun without disintegrating.
If you’re not all that excited about scanning the sky for this comet, you might be swayed when you learn that this is your only chance to spot this one. It last passed by Earth 437 years ago, and it might never do so again (unless the sun spares it).
Brad Gibson, director of the E. A. Milne Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Hull in the U.K., compared the event to Halley’s Comet passing by Earth in the 1980s, when speaking to the Evening Standard. That comet “takes 76 years to orbit the solar system,” he said. “So, to say this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see Nishimura isn’t an exaggeration.”
Gibson continued, “On average, people have the chance to see such a naked-eye comet once a decade—this is a rare and exciting opportunity.”
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