Comet P/2016 BA14
Comet P/2016 BA14 (Pan-STARRS) isn’t your average space snowball and it knows how to make an entrance.
At first 2016 BA14 was mistaken for a dead, dry asteroid until subsequent observations following its initial discovery in 2016 revealed some cometary action.
Most comets originate from the far edges of the solar system in a frigid area called the Oort Cloud. They take long, elliptical orbits from deep space around the sun that can last up to tens of thousands of years to complete a single trip.
Think of 2016 BA14 as part of a more select group of just 120 near-Earth comets. This is out of a larger group of over 30,000 known near-Earth objects, most of them asteroids.
So this particular object provides a pretty rare close-up glimpse of a comet, even if it isn’t the most active one around. In fact, shortly after it was first spotted in 2016 it made one of the closest passes by Earth of a comet ever.
In addition to exciting astronomers, this week’s close approach means that we could have had some comet bits flung into our atmosphere. Some models predicted that our planet could drift through a cloud of meteoroids that have separated from the comet’s kilometer-wide nucleus.
This possibility had the International Meteor Organization putting out the alert signal for skywatchers to be ready for a possible meteor outburst Monday night and Tuesday morning, particularly from the southern hemisphere where such a shower was thought to be more visible.
“This is a perfect timing, as the New Moon won’t be a nuisance to monitor some meteor activity from the source,” wrote the IMO’s Karl Antier.
So far the IMO has received over two dozen reports of fireball sightings on Monday and Tuesday, including a few from the southern hemisphere.
It’s hard to say what fireballs might have come from 2016 BA14 versus more common cosmic detritus, but there was notable bright fireball accompanied by reports of a sonic boom during the timeframe the potential meteor outburst was forecast.
If you missed the comet’s visit this time around, no need to worry: it will be back in a few years.
