A long time ago, if you discovered a comet you were held at celebrity status. 

A young man famous nowadays for actually not seeing a comet is “Charles Messier” in the late 1700s. They didn’t have telescopes nor the technology that we have today, so Messier had to observe the night sky with only his eyes. He was able to identify 110 nebulae and star clusters. 

In the science community, it’s very common for scientists to be named after what they identified. Young said this when asked about who first made a big impact on astronomy, “He died and he never discovered a comet, but what he did was create this list called the Messier objects which is famous in astronomy because they are all the objects you can see in the night time sky with your eye or binoculars.”

On August 30, 2019, Gennady Borisov made an amazing discovery at the MARGO observatory in Nauchnij, Crimea. This comet is 190 million miles from Earth. The measurement of this comet is between 1.2 and 10 miles. Scientists have flagged it as possibly being interstellar which means occurring or situated between stars. 

Researchers, such as Davide Farnocchia, are observing the comet to see if they can really clear that it is interstellar. Scientists are also trying to figure out where it’s going and where it originated since there is a possibility that it didn’t come from our solar system. 

Astronomy is fascinating to many students at Norrix like senior Rondea Dotson who said, “I like Astronomy because it’s kind of just a weird mix of clusters that are still continuing to grow.” 

Astronomers were puzzled about how and where the comet came from came from. Scientists are puzzled as to if these comets are the same or different as there are several names given to the comet that was identified in August. 

The comet is about 260 million miles from the sun. It’s said that the comet will be the closest to the sun on December 8, 2019. It seems there are more comets to be identified. Both of these comets are said to be from the same star or material. One of the comets is possibly going towards our solar system. It is said that people will be able to observe it with professional telescopes until April in 2020. 

Some of the arguments in the science community are that the comet is either another comet that broke apart or an alien probe. In 2017, a mass named Oumuamua was mistaken for an alien probe but was actually just a weirdly shaped rock. 

It has recently been very hard to identify as the science community keeps renaming the comet in different ways to honor Borisov who originally found the comet. One thing that continues to be said is that it’s the “Christmas Comet.”  

Senior Mikayla England concurred saying, “It’s a Christmas present, but not so much a present.”