TORONTO -- Comet NEOWISE, a massive burning “icy snowball,” will be closest to the Earth Wednesday night, before its orbit begins to take it out into the solar system.

It will be another 6,000 years before it passes this way again.

The comet -- officially named C/2020 F3 NEOWISE using a formula for when it was discovered and the name of the infrared telescope that discovered it -- is more than a 100 million kilometres away.

The sun is responsible for the heavenly glow that has been visible from Earth with the naked eye for about 10 days. The solid, icy and rocky surface of the comet has got so hot that it has converted to gases, which glow bright and illuminate the debris that is falling off comet, creating a tail as it moves through the sky.

But as the comet continually moves further from the sun, it is cooling off, and those hot gases will dim.

But earthlings are lucky to have been able to spot the comet at all, according to astronomer Chris Vaughan, a member of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada Toronto Centre.

Two other comets this year were supposed to have been as bright as this one but broke up as they neared the sun.

“But this one survived and hasn’t disappointed.”

According to NASA, the comet is about five kilometres wide and was formed near the birth of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago.

It will be visible for several more weeks with binoculars and then telescopes and he hopes seeing the comet will spur a whole new generation of astronomy buffs.

“It’s a bucket list for sky watchers, who always hope to see a spectacular comet.”

Brett Gladman, who holds a Canada Research Chair in planetary astronomy at the University of British Columbia, has been studying space for more than 30 years and he’s never before seen a comet with his naked eye.

He went to Vancouver’s Stanley Park to see NEOWISE a little over a week ago and then took pictures of it while on vacation in the interior of B.C.

“I was extremely pleased to see it,” he said, and was especially thrilled with some pictures he got on his smartphone.

He’s tried to see comets before, including watching from a rooftop in Edmonton for Halley’s Comet in 1986, but it was too cloudy. 

Others that have travelled around the Earth since have been much more visible below the equator due to the planet’s orbit, he says. To see this one, says Gladman, get out into the darkest possible night sky at about 10:30 p.m. or 11 p.m. 

Mike Kukucska wasn’t sure he had captured the comet until he checked his Nikon’s viewfinder on July 13 at about 11:30 p.m. Sure enough, there it was, streaking over the idyllic barn in Dundas, Ont.

“It’s not that dark in Dundas, so I couldn’t really see it with my naked eye… but it was quite exciting to see it on my camera.”

Kukucska, who owns a set-designing and manufacturing company in Dundas, got into long-exposure photography when he fell in love with capturing the Milky Way. He’s been out every clear night since NEOWISE came into view about 10 days ago.

“I love to get an earthly subject in the foreground because I think that gives meaning to the heavenly objects in the sky.”

Vaughan says take this opportunity to see a comet while you can because they are unpredictable and unscheduled.

“You just never know the show it’s going to be.”  

Correction:

An earlier version of this story suggested Halley’s Comet in 1986 was the last time a comet has been visible with the naked eye in the northern hemisphere.  That is incorrect. CTVNews.ca regrets the error.