Catch it while you can

The NEOWISE comet will be closest to the Earth on July 22

It’s dark and empty in Markham Park, and that makes it one of the best places in South Florida to spot a comet that won’t return for another 7,000 years.

The NEOWISE comet is visible with the naked eye this month, a rarity for comets. It gets dark enough to see it about an hour after sunset. It’s also important to get away from light pollution, which in South Florida means looking toward the Everglades.

Comets visible to the naked eye are visible every 20 to 30 years, said Ata Sarajedini, chair of the astrophysics department at Florida Atlantic University.

The comet is named after its discoverer, NASA’s Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer. The probe, which orbits the sun, discovered the comet in late March.

After this week, the NEOWISE comet will start to dim.

Sarajedini’s advice is to go to a dark site and bring binoculars, whether handheld or on a tripod.

Astronomy buffs gather in

“Once you find it, it’s really fun to see and look at it. They don’t come along every day.”

Bruce Borich

Markham Park (16001 State Road 84, Sunrise) almost every night to catch a glimpse of the comet. Astronomy is an avid hobby for Bruce Borich of Oakland Park, who was there to photograph the comet on July 19.

“People expect a comet will be blazing across the sky,” Borich said. “It’s not. It’s very quiet and subtle. Once you find it, it’s really fun to see and look at it. They don’t come along every day.”

Comets are “cosmic snowballs,” made up of ice, rock and dust, that orbit the sun. As they get closer to the sun, they heat up and release gas and dust molecules that form their distinctive tails. The NEOWISE comet is especially bright.

“This comet is more spectacular [than Halley’s comet],” said Borich. “It’s really beautiful.”

It’s a big object in the sky.

Borich described it looking like a fuzzy star with a fuzzy tail, up in the northwest sky below the Big Dipper. But in the midst of the rainy season, the clouds can make it difficult to see.

“People would start hooting and hollering once they saw the comet,” said Borich.

The comet will be closest to earth on July 22, at a mere 64 million miles away. It will not be visible again for thousands of years.

JENNIFER LETT/SOUTH FLORIDA SUN SENTINEL Ricardo Camacho looks for the NEOWISE comet at Markham Park in Weston after biking along the levee at the west end of the park on Monday.

DAVID BECKER/GETTY The comet NEOWISE, or C/2020 F3, with its two tails visible, is seen in the sky above Goldfield, Nevada, on Saturday.