02 Jan 2017

Amateur and professional astronomers are invited to provide observations of three comets that will make close approaches to Earth over the next two years.
“We are organizing a worldwide coma morphology campaign for three comets,” said Nalin Samarasinha, Senior Scientist at the Planetary Science Institute, who is leading the project. “Two of these comets will have close approaches to Earth in early 2017 while the third one will come close in late 2018. We want to get both professional and amateur astronomers involved in the campaign.”

The three comets are 41P/Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresak, 45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pajdusakova, and 46P/Wirtanen. The comets will pass by Earth at distances ranging from 0.08 AU to 0.15 AU. AU or Astronomical Unit is the distance from the Sun to Earth. Such close approaches of three comets within two years are rare and typically occur only once every few decades.
The other organizers of the 4*P Coma Morphology Campaign are PSI Senior Scientist Beatrice Mueller, University of Maryland scientists Matthew Knight and Tony Farnham, and Walt Harris, a scientist from the University of Arizona.

Visit http://www.psi.edu/41P45P46P for more information on participating in the project.
Above, scientists will be asked to provide observations of the coma, or green portion, surrounding the nucleus of comet 45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pajdusakova and two others that will approach Earth over the next two years.