Read: How to catch a glimpse of Neowise.After that, the comet will begin its journey away from Earth back toward the outer solar system. To view it, people in the Northern Hemisphere can look to the northwestern sky, just below Ursa Major, commonly known as the Big Dipper constellation.Īstrophotographers, as well as astronauts aboard the International Space Station, have captured the stunning celestial phenomenon, which will continue to bring spectacular sightings into early August. Throughout July, the newly-discovered comet, formally named Comet C2020 F3 NEOWISE by NASA, has been visible both in the early hours before sunrise, and later in the evening after sunset. Its closest approach to Earth comes today, July 22, at a distance of about 64 million miles. An extended mission was ultimately added to search for near-Earth comets and asteroids-those whose orbits bring them close to Earth-that was called NEOWISE “Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Explorer”.Neowise, one of the brightest comets in decades, has brought with it a stunning debris trail this month, delighting skywatchers around the world. WISE, short for “Wide-field Infrared Explorer”, is an instrument launched in 2009 and initially used to discover asteroids and star clusters. Finally, NEOWISE denotes the discoverer, in this case a NASA space telescope. The “3” indicates this was the third such comet discovered in the second half of March 2020. “2020” indicates the year the comet was discovered and “F” reveals the half month of the discovery: “A” would indicate the first half of January, “B” the second half of January, and so on, with “F” signifying the second half of March (the exact discovery day was March 27). In this case, scientists currently estimate the period at something in the range from 4500 to 6800 years. This name reveals a lot about the nature of this celestial visitor: The “C” indicates this is a non-periodic comet-the period is the length of time for a celestial object to orbit the Sun one time, so a non-periodic comet is one that either takes a relatively long time-thousands of years-to orbit, or never really does complete an orbit. The full scientific designation of this “dirty snowball”, as American astronomer Fred Whipple nicknamed comets, is Comet C/2020 F3 NEOWISE. This means that, at one hour after sunset, the comet will go from about one fist-width above the horizon on the July 15 to three above the horizon on the 23 rd. This represents about the width of your fist held at arm’s length. In the chart, the vertical scale line to the right indicates 10˚ (degrees). Its relative movement against the background stars is more akin to that of the Moon plodding across the sky (whose obvious motion is detected over hours or days) than that of a shooting star (whose obvious motion is seen in the timescale of seconds). Note that while it changes position each day, it does not by any means “streak across the sky”. Lowell astronomer and comet expert Dave Schleicher said, “It’s not like you’re just going to glance up and, Oh wow, there it is! You need to have a good idea of where to look-and binoculars will help.” The adjoining finder chart, showing the position of the comet in the early evening sky over the next week, is thus a useful guide.Ĭomet NEOWISE will be visible low in the northwest, in the bottom reaches of the constellation Ursa Major. Happily, Comet NEOWISE is still going strong and looks to offer a stunning evening show in the coming days. But this action can also cause the comets to break apart, turning much-anticipated comet visits into disappointing celestial fizzles. This can result in the development of spectacular tails. For comets visiting the inner solar system, their volatile ices warm up as they approach the Sun. Observers scrambled to see it as soon as possible, largely due to the general capriciousness of comets. Over the past week Comet NEOWISE was visible just before sunrise, low on the northern-eastern horizon in the constellation Auriga.
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