Regional Science Centre and Planetarium offers rare comet watch today

KOZHIKODE: Comet 41P/Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresák – first detected in 1858 – will be making the closest flyby of Earth on Saturday since its discovery. It would zoom past at a very safe distance of around 21.2 million km (50 times the moon’s distance). From Kozhikode it rises at 5.11 pm, transits at 12.44 am Sunday and sets at 8:21 am. Regional Science Centre and Planetarium has made arrangements for tracking the comet using its sophisticated telescopes on Saturday from 10.30 pm till 1 am subject to clear skies. Interested people can participate in this event. Entry to this event is free.

Astronomer Horace Tuttle of Harvard College Observatory was the first to observe this comet on May 3, 1858. Professor M. Giacobini at the Nice Observatory in France was the second on June 1, 1907. But it wasn’t until L’ubor Kresák, a Slovak astronomer, who picked up the comet while scanning with his giant 25x100 binoculars on April 24, 1951 that astronomers began to realise that the comets of 1858, 1907 and 1951 were all the same comet. Comets are named after their discoverers so this one carries all three names: Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresák.