EVANSVILLE – The total solar eclipse won’t be the only rare celestial event shining above Evansville on April 8.
That same day will include the arrival of “The Devil’s Comet”: a heavenly glob of dust and ice that last burned across the sky in 1954.
Officially known as Comet 12P/ Pons-Brooks – named after its two astronomer founders, Jean Louis Pons and W.R. Brooks – the comet gets its more-menacing nickname due to two horns of ice and gas that jut up from its body. Others, meanwhile, have compared it to Han Solo’s Millennium Falcon.
The comet should actually be visible in the night sky right now, NASA officials Paul Chodas and Davide Farnocchia told CNN last week. But as it cuts its path through the stars, it will eventually only emerge during the daytime in this part of the world, making it difficult to see in the sunlight.
That’s where the eclipse comes in.
During Evansville’s brief blanket of darkness between 2:02 and 2:05 p.m. on April 8, viewers donning eclipse glasses should also get a solid view of the Devil’s Comet about 25 degrees away from the sun, according to NASA.
And it could put on quite a show. Dr. Theodore Kareta, a researcher at the Lowell Observatory in Arizona, told ABC News the comet’s prone to random explosions that sometimes make it visible to someone who just happens to be staring at the sky at the right time.
“These outbursts … (have) brought this object from being dim enough that you can only really see it with big professional telescopes to, in a couple of cases, something people can see from their backyard,” he said.
When was the last time the ‘Devil’s Comet’ was visible?
Pons-Brooks slices across Earth’s sky once every 70 years or so – meaning this could be the only time some Evansville residents ever see it. There’s no mention of the ’54 excursion in Evansville newspapers archives, and 1884 only brought a smattering of reports.
Its apparent visit in 1812, though, has sparked conspiracy theories in the farther corners of social media.
That year brought the latter part of series of earthquakes along the New Madrid Seismic Zone so strong that they temporarily reversed the flow of the Mississippi River. Now the comet’s return has ignited wild speculation that, like in the early 1800s, an earthquake could come with it. But earthquakes aren’t predictable, and it goes without saying that comets have nothing to do with them.
According to astronomers, it won’t pose any type of “Deep Impact” risk, either. Officials told CNN it won’t get any closer than about 139 million miles away – meaning it will drift away peacefully, biding its time until another return in the 2090s.
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