Starwatch: The truth about the supernova and the comet
Comet Elenin was beyond Jupiter when it was found, but tracking inwards towards a perihelion 72 million km from the Sun, which it passed on Saturday. It is now tracking outwards and will pass a safe 35 million km from the Earth on 16 October. Despite the claims to the contrary, there is no chance of a collision or of any of the other dire effects we read about. Indeed, the comet's nucleus was only ever a small icy body and observations suggest that it may have disintegrated as it neared perihelion, as others have done before.
Our chart shows the lower half of our eastern sky at 05:30 BST tomorrow, but is valid also for 03:30 BST in mid-October. Mercury is just visible tomorrow, very low in the twilight at mag -1.1, but is likely to disappear by next weekend.
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