Best View of Comet Hartley 2 Coming Soon

Best View of Comet Hartley 2 Coming Soon

A comet discovered in 1986 will soon make a close pass by Earth, giving sky-watchers the best view of this cosmic body in decades. The visit comes a few weeks before a NASA probe is due to fly by the icy space rock.

Comet 103P/Hartley 2 was discovered by Australian astronomer Malcolm Hartley, who calculated that the object orbits the sun about every 6.5 years. Until now, however, gravitational interactions with Jupiter kept shifting the comet's path, sending it closer to the sun and thus farther from Earth during each subsequent return.