The C / 2013 US10 comet, commonly known as Catalina, first visited the Solar System, and will be observable to the naked eye in the coming days, as reported by the Astrophysics Institute of the Canary Islands (IAC).
One of the particularities of this comet is that, while remaining in the Oort Cloud, a spherical cloud surrounding the solar system at a distance of about one light year from the Sun, his career changed due to a “gravitational push” caused by the passage of a nearby star, redirecting it to the inside of our system.
“It’s a wanderer who carries in her womb details of the genesis of our solar system, and we just will have two months to try to know,” says IAC, whose telescopes and point to the sky for ‘I hunt ‘when passing near THE EARTH.
Specialists estimate that Catalina has a hyperbolic orbit and, therefore, just visit us once and then leave the solar system after its perihelion passage (maximum approach to the Sun).
On December 31 Catalina will be only a degree from the star Arcturus, the brightest star in the sky for those living in the northern hemisphere. The closest approach to Earth will occur on January 17, 2016, when it passes 108 million kilometers from our planet.
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