A comet called Atlas, discovered in December, is on its way towards Earth and could appear as bright as a crescent moon - unless it breaks up from the Sun's heat first. Seeing a comet with the naked eye would be a rare event for astronomers - the last bright comet visible without a telescope in the northern hemisphere was Hale-Bopp in 1997. 'Comet ATLAS continues to brighten much faster than expected,' Karl Battams of the Naval Research Lab in Washington DC told SpaceWeatherArchive. The head (or coma) of Comet ATLAS is big, albeit 'very faint and ghostly,' John Bortle, an expert in comets told Space.com. 'It's going to be fun the next few weeks watching Comet ATLAS develop (and provide a nice distraction from the current state of the world), Carl Hergenrother, a comet observer based in Arizona, wrote.

Source: Daily Mail March 20, 2020 17:16 UTC