Comet 64P/Swift-Gehrels is forecast to reach its brightest, at around mag 10.4. It will lie at a distance of 1.39 AU from the Sun, and at a distance of 0.44 AU from the Earth.

From Ashburn, it will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible at around 19:13 (EDT) as the dusk sky fades, 43° above your eastern horizon. It will then reach its highest point in the sky at 23:11, 87° above your southern horizon. It will continue to be observable until around 05:15, when it sinks to 22° above your north-western horizon.

For more information about its path across the sky, see In-The-Sky.org's ephemeris page for comet 64P/Swift-Gehrels.

This event was automatically generated on the basis of orbital elements published by the Minor Planet Center (MPC), and is updated daily (last update, 23 Mar 2019).

Note that the future positions of comets are typically known with a high degree of confidence, but their brightnesses are often much more unpredictable, since it is impossible to predict with certainty how they will respond as they move closer to the Sun. Magnitude estimates should be assumed to be highly provisional more than a few weeks in advance.

Printable finder charts

Click to expand »

The exact position of comet 64P/Swift-Gehrels will be:

The coordinates are given in J2000.0.

Source

The circumstances of this event were computed using the DE405 planetary ephemeris published by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

This event was automatically generated by searching the ephemeris for planetary alignments which are of interest to amateur astronomers, and the text above was generated based on an estimate of your location.

Image credit

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