A comet is approaching the Earth, which can fall apart

Astronomer Borisov spoke about the surprise that is preparing a recently discovered celestial body

A comet that could give mankind a surprise in the form of a bright explosion is approaching the Earth. Object C/2023 P1 Nishimura was discovered on August 12 by Japanese astronomer Hideo Nishimura. On September 13, it will become visible to the naked eye at dawn.

Nishimura discovered his comet in one of his many photographs of the night sky. The heavenly wanderer, of which more than a dozen were discovered this year by astronomers around the world, attracted the attention of professionals with its brightness – even now it is observed by many in amateur telescopes. Its arcuate trajectory is also interesting, very reminiscent of the trajectory of the rarest comets flying towards us not from the solar system, but from interstellar space. Recall that only two of them have been discovered in the entire history of astronomy – this is Oumuamua and Borisov’s comet.

In early September, C/2023 P1 Nishimura will fly in the constellation Leo. By September 13, when it will be approaching the constellation Virgo, its brightness may increase to 7-6 magnitude, that is, it will be almost visible to the naked eye, despite something that will pass from the Earth at a distance of 127 million kilometers (recall that from the Earth to the Sun – 150 million km).

Observation of the comet will be hampered by its position in the sky – it will be visible only a short time after sunset in the west and shortly before dawn in the east, thus resembling the planet Venus.

We managed to clarify the data on the comet by contacting Gennady Borisov, an employee of the Crimean branch of the Astronomical Scientific Center.

– Gennady Vladimirovich, can you confirm that the comet Nishimura is from another solar system?

– Such reasoning took place, but the Minor Planet Center of the International Astronomical Union determined its orbit as parabolic with an eccentricity (a parameter that determines the degree of orbit elongation) equal to 1, which refutes its “interstellar” nature.

We can say with high probability that Nishimura’s comet is a body flying out of the Oort Cloud – a sphere of comets that surrounds our solar system.

By the way, I shot this comet a week ago. It is now flying past the Sun, which means that against the background of the dawn sky at the moment of closest approach to the Earth, it will be weakly visible, if it does not surprise …

– Which?

– As it approaches the Sun, it can suddenly flare up, breaking into large pieces. When the amount of escaping matter increases, the size of the celestial body also becomes larger. The brightness of comet Nishimura can change explosively, and immediately by 10 times.

Meanwhile. Gennady Borisov himself, who has been an honorary member of the International Organization for Alert of Dangerous Asteroids since 2020, discovered 23 new asteroids in 2023 alone, one of which is considered potentially dangerous (the latter include bodies that have a diameter of 150 meters and fly from Earth to distances from 19.5 distances from the Earth to the Moon).

The new dangerous asteroid 2023OE6 was discovered by Gennady Borisov on July 29th. According to the Minor Planet Center, in the foreseeable future, it can pass from Earth at a distance of 1,414,500 km.

Help “MK”. According to the Institute of Applied Mathematics. Keldysh, the orbital period of comet C/2023 P1 Nishimura is currently unknown, but it is likely that it is several hundred years.