Comet K2 rushes towards Earth for a close flyby on July 15; watch the event live

mega comet C/2017 K2 (PANSTARRS), also known as comet K2, is hurtling towards Earth for a close fly-by on July 15. According to observational data from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, comet will make its closest approach from a distance of 270 million kilometres (168 million miles) at an estimated time of 8:39 am IST. K2 was discovered in 2017 using  Pan-STARRS survey telescope in Hawaii and is considered one of farst comets ever found. 

Watch comet skim past Earth

comet's closest approach will be aired live on official YouTube channel of Virtual Telescope project, which spots and locates near-Earth asteroids. According to Virtual Telescope, webcast will begin at a scheduled time of 3:45 am IST on July 15 and you can watch event via video link above. 

Fate of comet K2

After skimming past our planet this month, comet will he toward sun for its closest approach to star in December. According to EarthSky, even if comet survives sun's wrath during flyby, it will not be bright enough to spot with naked eye. Notably, comet's size is highly disputed as observations by Cana–France–Hawaii Telescope suggest comet's nucleus to be around 30 to 160 kilometers wide as opposed to NASA's Hubble Space Telescope's estimation of just 18 km.

However, professional comet observer John Noonan, during an interview with Space.com, said that comet's visibility later in year would depend not on size but on its distance from Earth and amount of sunlight hitting its surface. He furr said that comet's visibility would be a poor one due to low sunlight reflection owing to its distance from sun. 

As mentioned above, comet K2 is one of farst comet's ever discovered, second only to Bernardinelli-Bernstein. Measuring about 100 times size of a normal comet, Bernardinelli-Bernstein was more than 4.4 billion km (2.7 billion miles) from sun at time of its discovery. Notably, this huge comet will make its closest approach to our planet in January 2031.