![]() ![]() ![]() The lower, broader tail is the comet’s dust tail, while the thinner, upper tail is the comet’s ion tail (Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Naval Research Lab/Parker Solar Probe/Guillermo Stenborg)īesides putting on a dazzling show, comets like NEOWISE, which are remnants from our solar system's creation, can also provide scientists with important clues about our origins. NASA's Parker Solar Probe captured a stunning image of NEOWISE sporting two tails on July 5, 2020. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC. "Comet NEOWISE actually has two distinct tails, one of gas and one of rocky dust, that point in slightly different directions because they react differently to the movement of the comet and the solar wind of charged particles that stream from the Sun," explains astrophysicist Karl Battams of the U.S. While this usually results in one visible tail, images of Comet NEOWISE, captured by NASA's Parker Solar Probe (PSP) on July 5, 2020, clearly show twin tails. As expected, the Sun's heat caused some of the comet's frozen gas and dust to vaporize and spread out behind its nucleus. Comet NEOWISE comes from the Oort Cloud that lies in the outer reaches of the solar system (Credit: )įortunately for us, Comet NEOWISE emerged relatively unscathed after its closest encounter with the Sun (perihelion) on July 3, 2020, at a distance of 27 million miles (43 million kilometers). What makes it even more so is that most comets plunge directly into the Sun and disintegrat e into dust. ![]() Given that it takes thousands of years for them to reach the inner solar system, an opportunity to view a long-period comet like NEOWISE, which has a 6,800-year-long orbit, is rare to begin with. While most drift in blissful isolation, every so often, something disturbs the orbit of one of these frozen worlds, and it begins a long journey toward our Sun. NEOWISE hails from the outer reaches of the solar system known as the Oort Cloud, a graveyard of hundreds of billions of the icy bodies. The comet is named after NASA's Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE), which first detected it on March 27, 2020. Comet NEOWISE appears as a string of fuzzy red dots in this composite of several heat-sensitive infrared images taken by NASA's Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) mission on Ma(Credit: NASA) However, it has now risen high in the evening skies and can be viewed with the unaided eye by even the most casual stargazer. The spectacular cosmic snowball of frozen gas, rock, and dust has been visible to those willing to wake up before dawn since early July. (Credit: NASA/STEREO/William Thompson)Įven those not normally interested in astronomy will find it hard to resist NEOWISE, the brightest comet to grace our skies since the 1997 appearance of Comet Hale-Bopp. This image of comet NEOWISE was captured by NASA’s Solar and Terrestrial Relations Observatory, or STEREO, on June 24, 2020, as the comet approached the Sun. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |