Comet 46P/Wirtanen is forecast to reach the brightest point in its 1980 apparition on 24 November. At that time, it will lie at a distance of 1.06 AU from the Sun, and at a distance of 0.18 AU from the Earth.

From South El Monte on 24 November it will be visible in the morning sky, becoming accessible around 23:50, when it reaches an altitude of 20° above your eastern horizon. It will then reach its highest point in the sky at 04:22, 59° above your southern horizon. It will be lost to dawn twilight around 05:31, 55° above your south-western horizon.

The events that comprise the 1980 apparition of 46P/Wirtanen are as follows:

The table below lists the times when 46P/Wirtanen will be visible from South El Monte day-by-day through its apparition:

A more detailed table of 46P/Wirtanen's position on each night is available here. A diagram of the orbit of 46P/Wirtanen is available here.

Finder chart

The chart below shows the path of 46P/Wirtanen over the course of its apparition, as calculated from the orbital elements published by the Minor Planet Center (MPC). It is available for download, either on dark background, in PNG, PDF or SVG formats, or on a light background, in PNG, PDF or SVG formats. It was produced using StarCharter.

Click to expand »

Comet brightnesses

Comets are intrinsically highly unpredictable objects, since their brightness depends on the scattering of sunlight from dust particles in the comet's coma and tail. This dust is continually streaming away from the comet's nucleus, and its density at any particular time is governed by the rate of sublimation of the ice in the comet's nucleus, as it is heated by the Sun's rays. It also depends on the amount of dust that is mixed in with that ice. This is very difficult to predict in advance, and can be highly variable even between successive apparitions of the same comet.

In consequence, while the future positions of comets are usually known with a high degree of confidence, their future brightnesses are not. For most comets, we do not publish any magnitude estimates at all. For the few comets where we do make estimates, we generally prefer the BAA's magnitude parameters to those published by the Minor Planet Center, since they are typically updated more often.

No estimate for the brightness of comet 46P/Wirtanen is currently available.

The comet's position on 24 November 1980 will be:

The coordinates are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 17 Dec 2025

Source

This event was automatically generated on the basis of orbital elements published by the Minor Planet Center (MPC) , and is updated whenever new elements become available. It was last updated on 15 Dec 2025.

Image credit

© Andy Roberts 1997. Pictured comet is C/1995 O1 Hale-Bopp.

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