46/P Wirtanen
- Capture
- Canon EOS 60D 50mm f/3.5, 6sec, ISO 3200 stacked and processed 8 Dec 2018
- Date
- 8 December 2018
- Location
- Camden, NSW
- Original
- 1362 × 1842 px
46/P Wirtanen is a small Jupiter-family comet with a current orbital period of 5.4 years. On 16 December 2018, the comet passed 11.6 million km; 7.20 million mi; marking one of the 10 closest comet flybys of Earth in the last 70 years. The comet reached an estimated magnitude of 3.9.
See it in the comets gallery