Flying visit

NEVADA, USA, 23 JULY

Comet NEOWISE had stargazers eagerly searching the skies in July – including some frustrated members of the BBC Science Focus team who didn’t manage to spot it.

Discovered in March by NASA’s Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer telescope (after which the comet is named), it made its closest approach to Earth on 23 July, before heading off on a highly elliptical orbit that won’t bring it back into the inner Solar System for another 6,800 years. NEOWISE was the brightest comet in the northern hemisphere since Hale-Bopp in 1997.