RARE COMET only seen every 11 years to light up sky over Christmas with UNUSUAL green haze

On Sunday, a comet based 7.1 million miles away from Earth, 30 times further away than the moon, will make an unusual appearance. Dubbed the Christmas Comet, the rare phenomenon only passes Earth every 11 years. It is next is due to shine brightly in the night sky on December 23.

The collection of ice, dust and rock will then be visible throughout the Christmas period, shining for the next couple of weeks.

The comet, officially known as 46P/Wirtanen, will be visible in the sky by a green fuzz.

It was named after Carl Wirtanen, the scientist who first discovered it in 1948.

Explaining the unusual feature, University of Maryland Research Scientist Tony Farnham said: “The fuzziness is just because it’s a ball of gas basically.

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“You’ve got a one-kilometre solid nucleus in the middle, and gas is going out hundreds of thousands of miles.”

The festive special will shine brighter than most other meteors and comets, according to Mr Farnham.

He added: “The fact that it’s brighter means we can study a lot of different gas types that we normally can’t study because they’re too faint.”

The comet will be visible across the globe, possible to see from the naked eye to almost anyone not living in areas suffering from substantial light pollution.

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It is one of the closest ever comets to travel past Earth.

Paul Chodas, a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said: “By my count, there have been only about 10 other known comets that approached this close over the last century.”

46P/Wirtanen was first spotted more than 70 years ago and isn’t expected to travel so close to the globe for centuries to come.