Comet Pan-STARRS to shine brightest this weekend

A new treat is awaiting the sky–gazers as Pan-STARRS, a recently discovered comet, will be visible with naked eyes and it will shine its brightest after sunset this weekend and in the week to come.

Comet Pan-STARRS, the brightest comet in several years, will be visible with naked eyes in the evening twilight.

It will pass by sun at a distance of 0.3 Astronomical Unit on Sunday, its closest approach.

The chances of seeing the comet in broad daylight would be extremely low because of the solar glare, but by March 12 and 13, the comet will be visible after sunset not far from the crescent moon, said C B Devgun, Director of Science Popularisation Association of Communicators and Educators (SPACE).

The comet will be visible to naked eyes and through binoculars as well, he said.

On the evening of March 12, the slender sliver of a crescent moon, just one day past new, will be positioned less than 5 degrees to the right of the comet, making for perhaps a very picturesque scene, Devgun said.

The comet Pan-STARRS, known officially as C/2011 L4, is a non-periodic comet discovered in June 2011.

It was discovered using the Pan-STARRS telescope located near the summit of Haleakala, on the island of Maui in Hawaii.

Thought to be billions of years old, the comet originated in the distant Oort cloud, a cloud of icy bodies well beyond the orbits of Neptune and Pluto, and somehow got propelled toward the inner solar system.