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How close is "Christmas Comet" 46P/Wirtanen?

Upon reading that 46P/Wirtanen will be closer to Earth than it has been (or will be) in centuries, despite having an orbital period of under 6 years, I was curious to see a picture of its orbital path superimposed with Earth's. Here is a simple one-liner that shows the two orbits, and the current positions of the two bodies. The rarity of the event is now clear as a bell:

Graphics3D[{Entity["Planet", "Earth"][
   EntityProperty["Planet", "OrbitPath"]], 
  Entity["Comet", "Comet46PWirtanen"][
   EntityProperty["Comet", "OrbitPath"]],
  {Darker[Green, .2], PointSize[Medium], 
   Point@QuantityMagnitude[
     Entity["Comet", "Comet46PWirtanen"][
      EntityProperty["Comet", "HelioCoordinates"]]]},
  {Red, PointSize[Medium], 
   Point@QuantityMagnitude[
     Entity["Planet", "Earth"][
      EntityProperty["Planet", "HelioCoordinates"]]]}}, 
 Boxed -> False]

It looks a bit nicer in the front end:

How close is 46P/Wirtanen?

POSTED BY: Bruce Torrence
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