Article Posted on : - May 10, 2011

Trajectory of comet Elenin. Photo: NASA/JPL

WASHINGTON (BNS): The newly discovered comet Elenin will soon enter the inner solar system of our galaxy, a media report said.

On December 2010, Comet Elenin (also known by its astronomical name C/2010 X1), was detected by Leonid Elenin, an observer in Lyubertsy, Russia, who found the comet while using the remote-controlled ISON-NM observatory near Mayhill, New Mexico.

Nearly five months ago, the comet was about 401 million miles (647 million kilometers) from Earth. The comet has closed the distance to Earth's vicinity as it makes its way closer to perihelion (its closest point to the sun).

As of May 4, Comet Elenin's distance is about 170 million miles (274 million km).

"That is what happens with these long-period comets that come in from way outside our planetary system," Don Yeomans of NASA's Near-Earth Object Programme Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California said in a statement.

According to Space.com, the comet doesn't offer much of a view and is quite dim to behold.

NASA detects, tracks and characterises asteroids and comets passing relatively close to Earth using both ground- and space-based telescopes.

The agency's Near-Earth Object Observations Programme, commonly called "Spaceguard," discovers these objects, characterizes a subset of them, and predicts their paths to determine if any could be potentially hazardous to our planet, it said.