Comet NEOWISE

by Tom Shafer

July 18, 2020

Well, as you may be aware, the astronomy world is simply agog about Comet NEOWISE – and of course, it should be.  And so am I!  For the last several evenings, I have been sitting on my deck in the backyard taking in this wondrous celestial event.  And, I will be doing the same for several more nights into the end of July.  Do you want to see it?  Just continue reading and I’ll tell you how!

First, the comet wasn’t discovered until late March of 2020 by astronomers using the NEOWISE (near-Earth objects, wide-field infrared survey explorer) space telescope orbiting Earth.  Deactivated after a little more than a year of its original service as the WISE telescope, it was reactivated in 2013 (and renamed and repurposed) to assist NASA in its ongoing search for near-Earth objects like asteroids and comets.  In its ten-plus years in operation, WISE, now NEOWISE, has been used to study everything from galaxies to stars to comets to other “space stuff.”

And, you may ask, why all the excitement?  Well, it’s been twenty-three years since we collectively have experienced a comet of this size and proximity to Earth.  In 1997, the exhilarating and tragic Hale-Bopp brightened our nightly skies for seventeen months, visible to the naked eye for nearly all of that time.  Unfortunately, that comet will always be linked to the Heaven’s Gate incident, where thirty-nine members of that cult drank a lethal cocktail as final preparation to leave their physical bodies and enter a spacecraft they believed was enveloped in the tail of the comet.  From there, they expected to pass through Heaven’s Gate, where they would attain the highest realm of existence.  And, who’s to say they didn’t?

Now, NEOWISE will not be hanging around for a year and a half, so you need to catch it in the next couple of weeks.  And this one is really easy to find.  Though it is visible to the naked eye (if you have good vision), it will be much more fun with a nice pair of binoculars.  About half an hour after sunset, find the Big Dipper in the northwestern sky (in the northern hemisphere), and follow the two stars that create the bottom of the “cup” down toward the ground.  About halfway between those stars and the horizon, you will find NEOWISE and its plumy tail.  It will linger for a couple of hours after that (tooling along at 17,000 miles per hour!) as it drops down toward the horizon.  And for those of you just reading this, NEOWISE will be getting brighter over the next several days.  So, you haven’t missed it at all – yet!

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And, to make the experience even richer, swing your binoculars 180° to the southeastern sky and witness the brightness of Jupiter and its little friend Saturn (just below it to your left)!  If your binoculars are powerful enough, you might be able to see four of the seventy-nine moons (!) of Jupiter.  Though they will appear as little dots, it is so cool to see them, given that they are 385 million miles away!  And again, if your binoculars are strong enough, Saturn will appear oblong through them because it is tilted away from us, the large ring(s) creating that effect.  How groovy is that?!

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Actually, while you are at it, you might want to direct your binoculars over the entirety of the nighttime sky.  You will marvel at all of the stars you can see, in every direction!  Perhaps you will be persuaded to visit more often – because, you know, the sky is there every night, for your perusal and amusement!  Well, point of fact, the sky is there every day as well, and our star, the sun, is just as fun to look at.  So, like me, you should invest in a nice pair of solar-viewing glasses – then, you can stare at the sun to your heart’s content – and not ruin your retinas! 

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I hope you take the time to experience NEOWISE while you can.  Unfortunately, we have no similar comets on the horizon – literally – so you need to take advantage of this one.  Trust me, you won’t be disappointed!

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