Comet NEOWISE
July 18, 2020
Comet C/2020 F3' which is also called NEOWISE comet is considering the brightest comet of the last few decades that we can see with our naked eyes from the earth. Comets are made of ice, rock & dust. Comets were created by the frozen leftovers when the solar system form, roughly 4.6 billion years ago. The NEOWISE comet first discovers on March 27, 2020, by NASA's astronomers. The name NEOWISE came from the short name of the telescope that discovered this(Telescope Name: Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer telescope). Oort cloud is a spherical shell that surrounds everything of our solar system. It is made of icy pieces of space debris. The outer limit of the Oort cloud defines the cosmographical boundary of the solar system and comets that take more than 200 years to complete it's one lap around the sun, originate from the Oort cloud. The NEOWISE comet takes 6,800 years to complete one lap around its orbit. It comes from the Oort cloud. On July 22-23, this comet will pass the earth at a distance of 103 million kilometres. People living across Northern Hemisphere will be able to see it with naked eyes after sunset. This comet is considering the brightest comet of the last few decades because, at the starting of July, it crossed the Sun from a very close distance. Because of the sun's extreme heat, the outer layer of the comet released a huge portion of gas & dust which created a wide bright atmosphere around the comet that is called 'Coma'.The comet has another unique property. It has two tails. One is a dust tail & the other is gas tail. The comet's dust tail has whitish colour because its particles easily reflect sunlight. The other gas tail is slightly narrower than the main tail & has a faint blue colour. The brightness and its unique properties make this comet the rarest comet of the last few decades. The last comet that was bright like NEOWISE was Hale-Bopp comet. It was last seen in 1995-1996.
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