A GIANT ice comet that came closest to Earth on Thursday can still be spotted.
With a telescope, you can spot the K2 Comet receding in the sky in the constellation Ophiuchus.
You can still spot the ‘giant snowball’ comet K2 in the night sky[/caption]
Dubbed C/2017 K2, the comet zoomed into our inner solar system at a speed of around 615 km/sec.
When the comet was closest to the Earth, John Chumack with galacticimages.com found the speck of light in the serpent bearer constellation Ophiuchus.
“Look for a six-inch coma,” Chumack told Space.com.
What is a comet?
Comets are “cosmic snowballs of frozen gases, rock and dust”, according to Nasa.
read more tech news
They’re made of leftovers from the formation of the solar system.
When a comet approaches the Sun, it forms a “tail” made of gas and dust particles that face away from the large star.
Comet C/2017 K2
C/2017 K2 was discovered in May 2017 at a distance beyond the orbit of Saturn – when it was around 2.4 billion km from the Sun.
Nasa revealed that K2 has been traveling for millions of years from its home in the Oort Cloud, a region at the edge of our solar system.
Most read in Tech
The Oort Cloud contains hundreds of billions of comets, however, K2 is one of the largest we’ve ever observed.
In fact, K2’s tail, or coma is between 81,000 and 500,000 miles wide – that’s the size of between one to six Jupiters.
Since July 2007, K2 has been in the constellation of Draco, around 309 light-years from Earth.
How to still view the comet
Make sure you are viewing on a dark night when you can see stars, Mashable said.
Read More On The Sun
You will probably need to reference a star chart to locate the constellation Ophiuchus first.
Then, look inside the star neighborhood for a fuzzy comma, and that’s K2 Comet.
