“WE DO OCCASIONALLY STUMBLE INTO UNKNOWN COMETS”
BIO
Gregory Leonard
Leonard is a senior research specialist at the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. In January 2021 he discovered Comet Leonard – the brightest and most anticipated comet of 2021. The comet was spotted, somewhat accidentally, using the Catalina Sky Survey’s 1.5-metre (60-inch) telescope at the Mount Lemmon Infrared Observatory, located in the Santa Catalina Mountains in Arizona.
The comet, formally known as C/2021 A1, has since been making its way to the inner Solar System, passing near Earth on 12 December 2021 and Venus on 17 December 2021. On 3 January 2022, Comet Leonard reached perihelion – the closest approach to the Sun in its orbit – at a distance of roughly 90 million kilometres (56 million miles).
How did you discover Comet C/2021 A1?
I’m an astronomer with the Catalina Sky Survey, a NASA-funded project based out of the University of Arizona, and we’re directed to discover and track near-Earth asteroids – the kind of asteroids whose orbits can bring them close to Earth and potentially impact the planet. I discovered Comet C/2021 A1 Leonard – also known to
