Exactly when and where you can see 'once in a lifetime' comet tonight

A stunning celestial body will make a rare foray close to Earth tonight making it possible to see a comet with your naked eye in the skies over Britain.

The Oort Cloud comet, called , or just Tsuchinshan-ATLAS for short, will be sweeping past our planet tonight, but then won't be back again for another 80,000 years.

It will be a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see the space traveller which is on a highly elliptical orbit around the sun travelling for billions of miles.

According to NASA, comets are cosmic snowballs of frozen gases, rock, and dust that are left over from the formation of the solar system. This one is named after China's Tsuchinshan, or Purple Mountain, Observatory and an ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) telescope in South Africa.

The best way to see the comet tonight over the UK...

To escape the glare of lights from towns and cities it's best to head for higher elevations and more remote areas where the sky is easier to see clearly

Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) astronomer Dr Robert Massey told the BBC skies were due to clear tonight (Saturday) with most of the cloud dissipating over the North Sea.

Dr Massey advised people to "wrap up" and take a hot drink with them if they were heading to the countryside or parks. He added: "Just go out, enjoy it, don't sweat it."

Dr Massey also said the comet was most likely to be visible if you look to the west.

If you have a DSLR camera you may be able to photograph the comet but some mobile phone cameras held against a telescope lens may also be able to pick up the event too.

Dr Massey told the BBC: "If it's genuinely easy to spot, you might, might be able to pick up your mobile phone, rest on something, and just point and shoot."

According to NASA the brightness of the comet is "measured on the same scale we use for stars, one that has been in use since roughly 150BC when it was devised by the ancient scholar Hipparchus and refined by the astronomer Ptolemy.

It added: "Stellar magnitude is measured on a logarithmic scale, which makes a magnitude 1 star exactly 100 times brighter than a magnitude 6 star.

"The lower the number the brighter the object, making it more likely to be clearly seen, whether by telescope or the naked eye.

"The latest data estimates Tsuchinshan-ATLAS's brightness at between 2 and 4. In comparison, the brightest visible star in the night sky, Sirius, has a magnitude of -1.46.

"At its brightest, solar reflection from Venus is a magnitude of -4. The International Space Station sometimes achieves a relative brightness of -6."