Adriana Reyes Newell just wanted to take a photo of the beautiful sunset on Tuesday when she saw a blazing light in the sky approaching her.
“At first I thought it was a plane ruining my image,” said the Los Alamos National Laboratory physicist, who also works as a professional photographer. “But then it started breaking into many pieces.”
No, it wasn’t Comet NEOWISE, which so many people have reported seeing since March. It was a meteorite, briefly flying across the sky like a shooting star before disintegrating.
Reyes Newell photographed the meteorite flying over Santa Fe shortly before 9 p.m. Tuesday. She said she was observing the sky near Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center when she saw it.
She has already seen Comet NEOWISE and also took photos of that. Maybe you can see the comet if you’re lucky, he said.
“It is already moving away from Earth and the solar system, so if you can see it, it is very weak,” added Reyes Newell. “But there is time [to see it]. “
Wladimir Lyra, a professor of astronomy at New Mexico State University at Las Cruces, says there are about two more weeks to detect the rare comet. He suggested that people keep looking at the skies, looking in the direction of the Big Dipper.
The comet, about three miles in diameter and moving at about 200,000 miles per hour, was first seen in late March by NASA’s Near-Earth Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or NEOWISE.
“It is already fading,” he said, noting that it is moving into the sun’s orbit and will soon disappear beyond that.
Lyra said the comet is made of rock, ice and other frozen particles and gases. What is visible to the human eye is the tail of the comet as it heads towards the sun.
Her fascination with comets stems from a desire to understand more about the creation of the solar system some 4.6 billion years ago.
“Comets tell me something about the origin of the earth, how planets form,” said Lyra. Comets are like the remains of bricks that were used to build a planet. If I want to understand that building, I have to understand the bricks. “
To the average person, he said: “Kites are just beautiful … the world tramp who ever visits us.
“They break the consistency of the night sky.”
The same is true for meteorites, which also light up the skies over New Mexico and should not be confused with comets, Lyra said.
Any amount of meteor showers that fill the skies this summer can produce “shooting stars,” which seem to come across the dark horizon and disappear or burn, almost instantly, year after year.
But Comet NEOWISE only appears every 4,000 years. So if you miss it, you won’t be around the next time it happens.
“No one who is alive now will see him return,” Lyra said.
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