Earth set for brush with comet

A comet discovered by astronomers this year and heading past the Earth later this month will be bright enough to see with the naked eye.

Comet Ikeya-Zhang, named after the Japanese and Chinese astronomers who first spotted it on February 1, will be the brightest comet to make an appearance since Hale-Bopp in 1997.

During the second half of March and the first half of April, it will brighten rapidly to a point where it should be visible to the naked eye as a faint smudge in the western sky.

People in towns will have a harder job seeing it than people in the countryside but a low-powered pair of binoculars should provide a much clearer view.

Robin Scagell, from the Society for Popular Astronomy, said: "It's going to look like a small wisp of light in the sky.

"The comet has a pronounced tail extending over five to 10 degrees, which is about 10 times as long as the width of the moon."

Ikeya-Zhang is a periodic comet, which means it returns to the inner Solar System on a regular basis. It would have been visible in 1661 and may also have been seen in 1273 and 877. Some calculations suggest that on a previous occasion it might have split in two, with the larger fragment returning in 1532.

The comet can be found by looking low in the western sky between about 7.15pm in early March and as late as 9pm by the first week of April.

It will travel in an arc through the faint constellation of Pisces, and can best be seen by looking to the left of the easier to identify Pegasus star pattern. By March 16, it will be below the constellation of Aries.

In ideal conditions looking through binoculars, it may be possible to see two separate tails, a bright one caused by dust from the comet and a fainter bluer one created by gas. Mr Scagell said there was no need to worry about Ikeya-Zhang hitting the Earth - it will miss us by 37 million miles.