Comet NEOWISE Spotted From Bermuda

Officially known as C/2020 F3, Comet NEOWISE was recently photographed from Fort St. Catherine as its path takes it close to the Earth, something which will not occur again for some time, as the comet will not be visible in Earth’s skies for another 6,800 years.

A Space.com story said, “Officially known as C/2020 F3, Comet NEOWISE was first discovered in March by the infrared-optimized NEOWISE spacecraft [the name is short for Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Space Explorer].

“Since then, the comet has been spotted by several space telescopes and observatories, astronauts on the International Space Station and, of course, stargazers on Earth.

Photo by James Simmons:

“The light from the comet is sunlight reflecting off the dazzling tail of gas and dust trailing away from NEOWISE as it drifts ever farther from the sun. A second tail made of ionized particles blown back from the comet’s head [called its coma] by the solar wind can be seen in some photos.

“This comet is about 3 miles [5 kilometers] across, and most comets are about half water and half dust,” said NEOWISE science team co-investigator Emily Kramer of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who used that statistic to calculate just how much water is in Comet NEOWISE.

“It’s about 13 million Olympic swimming pools of water,” she added. “So that’s a lot of water.”

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