Comet C2020 F3 Neowise, Brightest Comets In Decades

Table of Contents

Asteroids: These are the rocky and airless leftovers from the formation of planets in our solar system. They mostly orbit our sun in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and range from the size of cars to dwarf planets.

What are comets?

Comets or “dirty snowballs” are mostly made of dust, rocks and ice, the remnants from time the solar system was formed over 4.6 billion years ago.
People thought of comets as “long-haired” stars.
The word comet comes from the Latin word “Cometa” which means “long-haired” and the earliest known record of a comet sighting was made by an astrologer in 1059 BC.

Comets can range in their width from a few miles to tens of miles wide.
As they orbit closer to the sun, they heat up and release debris of dust and gases that forms into a “glowing head” that can often be larger than a planet.
Each time a comet passes the sun, it loses some of its material and it will eventually disappear completely as a result.

A new comet called Comet C/2020 F3 NEOWISE was discovered by NASA’s
Near Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer telescope.
The comet was closest to the Sun on July 3 at 43 million km.
The comet will come the closest to Earth on July 22-23,
Which is when skywatchers across Northern hemisphere including in India will be able to see it with naked eyes or using binoculars after sunset.
On the day, the comet, which takes 6,800 years to complete one lap around its orbit.
It will be at a distance of 103 million kilometers while crossing Earth’s outside orbit.

Due to its proximity to the sun, its outer layer was released creating an atmosphere – referred to as Coma – of gas and dust from its icy surface.
This atmosphere sometimes leads to formation of a bright tail of debris that can extend for thousands or millions of kilometres.

While there are millions of comets orbiting the sun, there are more than 3,650 known comets as of now, according to NASA.
Some comets, which take less than 200 years to orbit around the sun is predictable since they have passed by before.
These may be referred to as short-period comets and can be found in the Kuiper belt
One of the most famous short-period comets is called Halley’s Comet that reappears every 76 years.
Halley’s will be sighted next in 2062.

The less-predictable comets can be found in the Oort cloud that is 100,000 times the distance between the Earth and the sun.
Comets in this cloud can take as long as 30 million years to complete one rotation around the sun.

They hold important clues about the formation of the solar system and it is possible that comets brought water and other organic compounds, which are the building blocks of life to Earth.
Further, NASA tracks all Near Earth Objects (NEOs) that includes comets and asteroids using telescopes placed all around the Earth, as part of its NEO Observation Program.