APOD: 2020 March 21 - Comet ATLAS and the Mighty Galaxies

Good Saturday afternoon, Rallypoint. Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) is titled "Comet ATLAS and the Mighty Galaxies." The Mighty Galaxies (M81 and M82, respectively) were originally discovered by Johann Elert Bode, on December 31, 1774. Bode described it as a "nebulous patch", about 0.75 deg away from M82, which "appears mostly round and has a dense nucleus in the middle." Pierre Méchain independently rediscovered both galaxies as nebulous patches in August 1779 and reported them to Charles Messier, who added them to his catalog as M81 and M82 after his position measurement on February 9, 1781. Both galaxies lie some 12 million light years away near Ursa Major (the Big Dipper).

Comet ATLAS was discovered in December 2019. It is about 9 light-minutes from Earth, still beyond the orbit of Mars. Based on it's current orbit, ATLAS will return to the inner Solar System in about 6,000 years. The comet will make its closest approach to the Sun on May 31 and may even become a naked-eye comet in the coming days.