By Ron Cowen
Scores of telescopes are watching a comet fall apart, and the main show may be only beginning. The comet has already fragmented into at least 59 pieces and may continue to break up as it reaches its position closest to the sun on June 6. In mid-May, the chunks will venture within 11.7 million kilometers of Earth—the closest any comet has come to our planet in 20 years—and the largest fragments should be visible with binoculars.
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Called Comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3, this body passes near the sun every 5.4 years and has been breaking up for years. But over the past month, the Hubble Space Telescope and other instruments have documented that a few of the 36-or-so biggest chunks have each split into several dozen smaller bits 20 to 30 meters across.