The First Naked Eye Comet of 2015 was nicknamed LOVEJOY..
The comet C/2014 Q2 was discovered by an amateur astronomer Terry Lovejoy on 17th August, 2014. C/2014 Q2 is the fifth comet discovered by Terry Lovejoy. He had discovered it using Celestron C-8 fitted with a CCD camera in his backyard in Brisbane, Australia. The comet had magnitude of 15 at the time of discovery. The magnitude is an astronomical unit which is used to tell the brightness of any object, the higher value in magnitude refers to the fainter object and lower value refers to the brighter object. The object with magnitude 5 or less can be seen by naked eyes. The sun has magnitude of -27 and moon has magnitude of -13.
The Comet Lovejoy is believed to come from very far in the ootz cloud. The period of orbit of comet is very large of about 11500 years but due to perturbations caused by gravity of planets the orbital period has decreased to 8000 years. Thus if you miss this comet this time then you have to wait for 8000 years to watch it again.
The closest approach of comet with the Earth happend on 7th January 2015 with a recorded distance of 70 million km from the Earth. The perihelion of comet was recorded on January 30 when it was at the distance of 1.29 AU from the Sun. Thus the comet is coming closer to Earth and will move away from Earth after january 7... And shall pass again...around 8,000 years or more...
~ credits to the source
