Out of This World
We were treated to a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity when the Comet NEOWISE, just discovered by scientists earlier year, soared past Earth in late July 2020 headed toward the far reaches of our solar system, not to be seen again for another 6,800 years. In areas with minimal “light pollution,” it was visible to the naked eye; in other areas, you needed binoculars to make it out in the northwest sky below the Big Dipper in the Northern Hemisphere.
Comets are a cocktail of frozen gases, rock and dust. When their orbits bring them close to the Sun, they heat up and glow, with two tails – one of dust and gases and one of electrically charged gas molecules called ions – that can stretch for millions of miles. NEOWISE is about 3 miles in diameter, which sounds massive but is actually the average size for a comet. It was traveling about 144,000 miles per hour.
Those are the cosmic facts.
What drew me to it was the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see something that has journeyed across our solar system, a remnant from its very creation…a true original.