The mission is called the Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) - that's where the new comet gets its name. The spacecraft was scanning for asteroids and comets (balls of space ice and dust) that fly too close to Earth. the evening, tracking farther into the western sky, night by night. Nobody even knew Comet Neowise existed until a NASA space telescope discovered it approaching just three months ago. Spotted by NASAs NEOWISE space telescope, this comet was found to be on a very long. 14 when the comet was about 143 million miles (230 million kilometers) from Earth. Which is the most famous comet in the Solar. 'This comet is a weirdo - it is in a retrograde orbit, meaning that it orbits the sun in the opposite sense from Earth and the other planets.' Officially named 'C/2014 C3 (NEOWISE)', the first comet discovery of the renewed mission came on Feb. Also called the Great Comet of 1997, comet C/1995 O1 (Hale-Bopp) is a large comet with a nucleus measuring approximately 37 miles (60 kilometers) in diameter. It takes 415 years for comet C/1861 G1 Thatcher to orbit the sun once. Although impacts are extremely rare, a space rock big enough to destroy a city (or worse) could hurtle towards Earth at any time, and scientists might not see it until it's far too late. It takes 415 years for comet C/1861 G1 Thatcher to orbit the sun once. Comet NEOWISE Discovery Images JComet C/2020 F3 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 March 27, 2020. Tens of thousands of potentially dangerous objects regularly careen past Earth undetected, and some of them inevitably crash into it.Ĭomets - balls of space ice and dust - almost never pose a threat to Earth, but asteroids and meteors (smaller chunks of rock) come close more often. The comet is a benign and beautiful sight, but it highlights a global vulnerability. Comet Neowise, a 3-mile-wide chunk of space ice, is rocketing past our planet, creating a spectacle in the night: a brilliant ball of white light with long, colorful tails. From mid-July on, its best viewed as an evening object, rising increasingly higher above the northwestern horizon, NASA said. A welcome distraction has turned the world's eyes to the sky this week.
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