Look up at the stars this month, and you could see the brightest comet adorning the skies of the northern hemisphere in decades. In July 2020, Comet NEOWISE (short for C / 2020 F3 NEOWISE) has thrilled sky watchers in North America, Europe and space. If you don’t see the comet this time, you won’t have another chance. It has a long, elliptical orbit, so it will be approximately 6,800 years before NEOWISE returns to the inner parts of the solar system.
The photo above and the time lapse video below show NEOWISE as seen from the International Space Station (ISS) on July 5, 2020. An astronaut took over 340 photos as the comet soared above the sunlit branch from Earth as the ISS passed overhead. Uzbekistan and Central Asia.
Comet Neowise has a nucleus that is approximately 5 kilometers (3 miles) in diameter, and its ion and dust tails stretch hundreds of thousands to millions of kilometers as they point away from the Sun. The icy visitor was discovered on March 27 2020 by NASA’s Near-Earth Near-Earth Object Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) spacecraft as the comet headed toward the Sun. The comet made its closest approach to the Sun on July 3, and then turned to the outer solar system.
Comets are made from frozen remnants of the formation of the solar system approximately 4.6 billion years ago. The masses of dust, rocks and ice heat up as they approach the Sun; As they get closer, they spew gases and dust at a glowing head and tail. Satellite data indicates that NEOWISE has one tail of dust and possibly two tails of ionized gas. The comet is made visible by sunlight that is reflected by its gas emissions and dust tail.
“It is rare enough that a comet is bright enough to be seen with the naked eye or even with binoculars,” Emily Kramer, co-researcher on the NEOWISE satellite, said in an Internet broadcast from NASA Science Live. “The last time we had such a brilliant comet was Hale-Bopp in 1995-1996.”
The photo above shows the comet (bottom right) on July 14, 2020, against the backdrop of a green aurora in western Manitoba, Canada. The bright streak at the top is a meteorite. The purple ribbon-like structure is an aurora-shaped structure called STEVE (short for Strong Thermal Emission Rate Improvement), a phenomenon that was recently discovered with the help of citizen scientists. Donna Lach, the photographer and an avid participant in the Aurorasaurus project, watched the scene for three hours and said the comet even made it past the bright aurora at times.
NEOWISE is expected to make its closest approach to Earth on July 22, passing a harmless distance of 103 million kilometers (64 million miles). Starting in mid-July, viewers can see the comet after sunset, below the Big Dipper in the northwest sky. For a better view, be sure to find a place away from city lights and with a clear view of the sky. While you may be able to see it with the naked eye, you may want to bring binoculars or a small telescope.
The photograph of the astronaut ISS063-E-39888 (above) was obtained on July 5, 2020, with a Nikon D5 digital camera with a 28-millimeter lens and is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observation Facility and the Earth Sciences and Remote Sensing, Johnson Space Center. The image was taken by an Expedition 63 crew member. Time-lapse animation of Sara Schmidt from NASA Earth Science and Remote Sensing group JSC. Aurora and photograph of the comet by Donna Lach, used with permission. Kasha Patel story.
