2012 holds little in the way of bright comets for this upcoming Summer season! Comet Garradd C/2009 P1 still lies in the constellation of Cancer and will soon be lost in the sunshine glare of dusk by mid to late June. All other comets are fading or will not approach magnitude brightness values greater than 13th until possible mid to late Autumn season. You can still catch Garradd about 1 hr 45 min to 90 minutes after dusk when it is still 30 degrees above the horizon when one is not looking at the comet through a column of air twice the mass and depth with respect to looking at objects at or around the sky zenith along the celestial meridian! There are two other comets stay show some promise for the mid to late Summer (June and August); 96P/Comet Machholz 1 when it could reach maximum magnitude brightness range of 7 - 8 and then there is the recently discovered comet from the LINEAR survey C/2012 K5 from the published results of the Lincoln Laboratory NEAR project during the evening of 25 May 2012! The orbital elements of the comet where calculated by the IAU - Minor Planet Center on 29 May 2012 at 0.04389 TT (Terrestrial Time) or 01:02:09.9 UTC. The comet will graze along the northern edge of 'The Big Dipper' for most of December 2012 and could reach a maximum predictability possible magnitude brightness of 6.42 the evenings of 30 - 31 Dec 2012 when it is at a maximum angular size of 22.1' or about 51.8% the size of an average Full Moon! In this future time period the comet will approach the Earth to a perigee of 0.31 AU or a distance of nearly 28.8 million miles(46.34 million km); less than 1% the nearest distance between the planet Mercury and the Sun!

In the future there will be more weekly updates not only on comets, but on the latest news on Asteroids, other kinds of minor planets and NEOs! Also any update information of Robotic missions to the Comets, Asteroids, and other minor planets will be included on this webpage! Stay Tuned!