Comet C/2017 K2 (PANSTARRS), also called K2, will soon be on the radar of researchers on Earth.
Viewers can watch the comet online by connecting to the live broadcast of the Virtual Telescope project, which will begin on July 15 at 01:15 (Moscow time).
Over the past few years, K2 has been moving towardsEarth. Comets, which are mostly frozen gases, rocks, and dust, become active as they approach the Sun; solar heat heats up the comet very quickly, causing its solid ice to turn into gas and form a cloud around the comet.
K2 was already active when it was discovered between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus in 2017, at a distance of about 2.4 billion km from the Sun. This is about 16 times greater than the distance from the Earth to the Sun.
The first observations showed that the comet hasbig core. While the Canadian-French-Hawaiian Telescope (CFHT) has suggested that the K2 core may be 30-160 km wide, data from the Hubble Space Telescope indicates that it may be 18 km wide.
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