Cometh a comet that won’t return for 6,800 years
A COMET that won’t be seen again for 6,800 years will be visible over Ireland this week.
Discovered by Nasa earlier this year, the ‘split-tailed’ Comet Neowise has been visible for most of July and will come closest to the Earth this week.
After briefly passing by Earth, the icy object will then zip out of the solar system and into the infinite depths of space.
‘It’s quite rare for a comet to be bright enough that we can see it with the naked eye or even just with binoculars,’ said Emily Kramer, a co-investigator of the Neowise satellite, in a Nasa Science Live webcast.
‘The last time we had a comet this bright was Hale-Bopp back in 1995-1996.’
To see the once-in-many-lifetimes comet, viewers in Ireland are advised to look up to the sky northwesterly just after sunset.
Nasa has instructed stargazers to look beneath The Plough or Big Dipper constellation ‘for a fuzzy “star” with a tail’.
Each night, the comet will rise increasingly higher over the northwestern horizon. Although the comet is visible to the naked eye, optimum viewing can be best reached with binoculars or a small telescope. Nasa has also recommended viewing the comet in an area away from the city with little to no light pollution.
And with Met Éireann promising some clear skies, this week would be a great time before the clouds begin congregating once again.
Neowise, measuring 5km in diameter, was first discovered on March 27 by Nasa’s Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (Neowise) spacecraft when the comet was hurtling towards the Sun.
According to the astronomy website earthsky.org, many observers have reported that once you spot the comet with binoculars, you can remove them and glimpse this comet as a fuzzy object, with the unaided eye.
Using binoculars or other optical aid is a must, though, if you want to see this comet’s splendid split tail, it said.
Neowise will be closest to Earth on Wednesday night. It will pass at some 103million kilometres away and will only be visible in the northern hemisphere.
There are ‘about 13million Olympic swimming pools of water’ in the comet, Ms Kramer said during a news conference last Wednesday. ‘Most comets are about half water and half dust,’ she added.
The comet is travelling at about 64 kilometres per second.
Joe Masiero, deputy principal investigator of the Neowise mission, said the comet is moving about twice as fast as the Earth’s speed around the Sun. According to Space.com, because of the comet’s extremely elliptical orbit, it will slow down as it reaches its farthest point from the Sun, then fall back toward the inner solar system and accelerate again when it heads back round the Sun.
Moving twice as fast as Earth