Once it is out of sight, the comet will not be visible in Earth’s skies for another 6,800 years, according to NASA.
As July began with the comet visible low on the horizon in the morning sky, NEOWISE has now transitioned into a nocturnal comet, perfectly visible as the sky darkens.
It is named after NASA’s Near-Earth Widefield Infrared Object Explorer, also known as the NEOWISE mission, which discovered it in late March.
You may be able to see it with the naked eye, but grab a pair of binoculars or look through a small telescope, if you have one, for a better view
If you live in an urban area with a lot of light pollution, you may want to find a place to look at the sky that has less light and obstructions, such as tall buildings.
After the sun goes down, look for the Big Dipper constellation in the northwest sky, according to NASA. Just below, you will see the comet. It looks a bit like a fuzzy star with a tail.
The comet will continue to soar above the northwest horizon for the rest of this month. It will get closer to Earth on July 22, just 64 million miles away.
While comets are unpredictable and can disappear from view at any time, astronomers predict that we should be able to see it for the rest of the month.
Kites are made of ice and dust, with some organic material. Many of the long-orbiting comets, like NEOWISE, only venture through the inner solar system and close to the sun for a short time.
Scientists compare it to the “cold storage” output for the comet because the outer solar system where they originate is much colder. The heat from the sun and the internal solar system causes the ice to melt, although astronomers are not sure why ATLAS broke.
After its closest approach to Earth, Comet NEOWISE will continue in its very long orbit to the edge of the solar system, extending 715 astronomical units of our sun. (In comparison, Earth is an astronomical unit of the sun.)
That is why we will never see the comet in our lives again: it takes thousands of years to travel through the outer solar system before returning to the inner solar system.
But, scientists point out, this means the comet is not exactly new, just new to us, because it previously passed through Earth’s skies when humans were present about 6,800 years ago.
Discovering the NEOWISE comet
While Comet NEOWISE was discovered on March 27 by NASA’s near-Earth wide-field infrared prospecting explorer, the mission did not begin to find comets.
Ten years ago, the mission was launched as WISE and was designed to map the entire sky with infrared light.
But the team realized that it was also quite useful for observing asteroids and comets and measuring their size and how reflective they were, said Amy Mainzer, NEOWISE principal investigator at the University of Arizona, at a NASA press conference this week. . The NEOWISE mission has found a couple of dozen comets so far.
The WISE mission was only designed to last about seven months, but NASA asked the team to reactivate it after their main mission ended in 2013, and they have been using NEOWISE to observe the skies ever since, Mainzer said. The team estimated that the NEOWISE mission only has about a year left.
“We are excited that you can still find spectacular things like this kite,” Mainzer said.
The team discovered Comet NEOWISE by its infrared emissions, which means they could choose their heat signature. In late March, scientists determined what a comet was and when it would pass near the sun, and have been tracking it ever since.
By looking at the comet, the researchers discovered that it is approximately three miles in diameter, the average size of a comet with a long orbit. And it’s incredibly bright, even if it’s not as spectacular as Comet Hale-Bopp as it was seen in 1997.
Sometimes when comets that have a lot of mass, like NEOWISE, can separate when they get close to the sun. Its ice heats up so fast it crushes and destroys the comet, Mainzer said. Because this comet survived, it tells astronomers that there is something unique about its structural strength.
Comets in our solar system were formed from the beginning. The gas and dust formed into groups that orbited in a disk around our young sun, and those groups became planets, asteroids, and comets. The comets were ejected to the edge of the solar system, so their ice remains pristine.
NASA scientists and the NEOWISE team will continue to observe the comet with various instruments and cameras to see how it is progressing, said Emily Kramer, co-investigator for the NEOWISE science team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
Because the comet is so bright, scientists hope to get better data, and much more, than they normally do for most comets, Kramer said.
Most comets are so faint that they can only be seen with the most powerful telescopes. Scientists hope to learn the composition of this comet based on the data they collect. That composition could reveal more information about the “ingredients” used to make our solar system.
Although this comet takes a long time to complete an orbit around the sun, some that originate beyond the solar system can take hundreds of millions of years to orbit the sun or even longer, Mainzer said. Meanwhile, some of the closest comets only take about five to six years to complete an orbit. Comet NEOWISE is in the middle, taking about 7,000 years.
“This comes from a medium-long distance,” said Mainzer. “How it got there is a bit mysterious. It may have had a more distant orbit that was disturbed to create this current orbit.”
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