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Comet C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) is becoming increasingly tough before sunup. It’s magnificent now, through binoculars, in the northwest each evening. Easiest to see from northerly latitudes. Coming into view from further south. Not visible from the Southern Hemisphere. Charts and more info here. Location of Comet NEOWISE from July 20 to 26. Face northwest, just after sunset. Avoid trees or buildings to have a clear view of the northwest horizon. Sweep with your binoculars around the location for the comet marked on this chart. Some might barely see the comet with the unaided eye. So far, evening views have been...

Neowise viewed from Germany, 14 July 2020. (SimgDe/Wikipedia/CC By SA 4.0) ====================================================================================== Neowise is the first bright comet to be visible with the naked eye from the Northern Hemisphere since the mid-1990s. Another thing that makes this comet interesting is that it has a relatively long orbital period, meaning it was only discovered a few months ago. Halley's comet, for example, takes about 75 years to return to the same position near Earth, meaning everybody has the opportunity to see it potentially twice during their lifetime. Neowise has an orbit of almost 6,800 years, meaning that the last generation of...

(Comet Week continues) Explanation: If you can see the stars of the Big Dipper, you can find comet NEOWISE in your evening sky tonight. After sunset look for the naked-eye comet below the bowl of the famous celestial kitchen utensil of the north and above your northwestern horizon. You're looking for a fuzzy 'star' with a tail, though probably not so long a tail as in this clear sky snapshot taken from Los Padres National Forest in California on the evening of July 16. Recent photographs of C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) often show this comet's broad dust tail and fainter but...

(Comet week continues with northern lights in photo) Explanation: After local midnight on July 14 comet NEOWISE was still above the horizon for Goldenrod, Alberta, Canada, just north of Calgary, planet Earth. In this snapshot it makes for an awesome night with dancing displays of the northern lights. The long-tailed comet and auroral displays are beautiful apparitions in the north these days. Both show the influence of spaceweather and the wind from the Sun. Skygazers have widely welcomed the visitor from the Oort cloud, though C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) is in an orbit that is now taking it out of the...

(Comet week continues) Explanation: Comet NEOWISE has been wowing photographers around much of the world during dawn and dusk, at the margins of day and night. For the most northern residents of planet Earth, however, the comet circles the North Star and never sets. The night part of this circular arc is apparent in the featured composite of images assembled from a webcam located at a ski resort in the Swiss Alps. Images were selected at 30-minute intervals throughout the night from July 12th -13th. Comet NEOWISE (C/2020 F3) will continue to become more accessible to northern hemisphere observers as...

(More comet week) Explanation: Have you ever seen a comet? Tonight -- and likely the next few nights -- should be a good chance. Go outside just at sunset and look to your northwest. The lower your horizon, the better. Binoculars may help, but if your sky is cloudless and dark, all you should need is your unaided eyes and patience. As the Sun sets, the sky will darken, and there will be an unusual faint streak pointing diagonally near the horizon. That is Comet NEOWISE. It is a 5-kilometer-wide evaporating dirty iceberg visiting from -- and returning to --...

Explanation: Comet NEOWISE (C/2020 F3) is now sweeping through northern skies. Its developing tails stretch some six degrees across this telescopic field of view, recorded from Brno, Czech Republic before daybreak on July 10. Pushed out by the pressure of sunlight itself, the comet's broad, yellowish dust tail is easiest to see. But the image also captures a fainter, more bluish tail too, separate from the reflective comet dust. The fainter tail is an ion tail, formed as ions from the cometary coma are dragged outward by magnetic fields in the solar wind and fluoresce in the sunlight. In this...

Up until now, you had to get up at about 4:00 a.m. to view Comet Neowise. Weather permitting, now starting Sunday, July 12, 2020 it can been seen on the lower northwestern horizon during/after evening twilight. Where to look? It's going to be about 5 degrees above the north/northwestern horizon starting Sunday evening at about twilight. To determine what 5 degrees are, keep reading. Hold your hand at arm’s length and close one eye, make a fist, with the back of your hand facing you. The width of your fist will approximately be 10 degrees. 5 degrees are about three...

Explanation: Rounding the Sun on July 3rd and currently headed for the outer Solar System, Comet NEOWISE (C/2020 F3) has been growing brighter in the predawn skies of planet Earth. From low Earth orbit it also rises before the Sun, captured above the approaching glow along the eastern horizon in this snapshot from the International Space Station on July 5. Venus, now Earth's morning star is the brilliant celestial beacon on the right in the field of view. Above Venus you can spot the sister stars of the more compact Pleiades cluster. Earthbound skygazers can spot this comet with the...

Explanation: These silvery blue waves washing over a tree-lined horizon in the eastern French Alps are noctilucent clouds. From high in planet Earth's mesosphere, they reflect sunlight in this predawn skyscape taken on July 8. This summer, the night-shining clouds are not new to the northern high-latitudes. Comet NEOWISE is though. Also known as C/2020 F3, the comet was discovered in March by the Earth-orbiting Near Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) satellite. It's now emerging in morning twilight only just visible to the unaided eye from a clear location above the northeastern horizon.

Comet NEOWISE is dimly visible in the early morning skies as the sun begins to rise. The comet was discovered in late March and made its closest approach to the sun on Friday as it spins around our star, according to EarthSky, and now begins its return journey out to deep space. It's the third comet to tantalize astronomers with a potential nighttime show this year, only to see the first two comets that showed promise instead burn up on their approach to the sun. But this third time appears to be the charm with NEOWISE. It's a bit tricky...

The American space agency says that one object is a massive comet, but has so far been unable to identify the other NASA recently spotted two massive space objects hurtling towards Earth. While the American space agency has pinpointed one as a comet, the other has left it slightly more baffled. The comet is set to fly close to Earth this week, but the mystery object isn't expected to make an appearance until February. The object, dubbed "2016 WF9", was detected by NASA's asteroid- and comet-hunting NEOWISE project on 27 November 2016. It is roughly 0.3 to 0.6 miles (0.5...

Less than four months after getting switched back on — and only days after its “next light” images — NASA’s re-commissioned NEOWISE mission has made its first discovery: a never-before-seen near-Earth asteroid 27 million miles (43 million km) away. Identified in a series of images captured on Dec. 29, 2013 YP139 is a coal-black asteroid about 650 meters — over 2,100 feet — wide. The image above shows the asteroid as a circled red dot as it moved across NEOWISE’s field of view over a period of several hours. 2013 YP139 would be all but invisible in optical light because...

NASA’s NEOWISE mission — formerly known as just WISE — has identified the first comet of its new near-Earth object hunting career… and, according to mission scientists, it’s a “weirdo.” To date several new asteroids have already been found by NEOWISE, and on February 14, 2014, it spotted its first comet. “We are so pleased to have discovered this frozen visitor from the outermost reaches of our solar system,” said Amy Mainzer, NEOWISE principal investigator at JPL. “This comet is a weirdo — it is in a retrograde orbit, meaning that it orbits the sun in the opposite sense from...

The results of a workshop to find the best ways to find, track and deflect asteroids headed for Earth were released by NASA on Friday (Feb. 7). NASA's Asteroid Initiative, started in 2013, includes a mission to capture a small near-Earth asteroid and drag it into a stable orbit around the moon, and a challenge to devise the best ideas for detecting and defending against potentially dangerous asteroids. The agency put out a request for information to refine the objectives of the Asteroid Initiative, to generate other mission concepts and increase participation in the mission and planetary defense. NASA received...

A hibernating spacecraft has been called back into service. The WISE (Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer”) spacecraft that has been sleeping in a polar orbit around Earth for two years will be turned back on next month to hunt for more potentially hazardous asteroids, and perhaps search for an asteroid that NASA could capture and explore in the future. “The WISE mission achieved its mission’s goals and as NEOWISE extended the science even further in its survey of asteroids. NASA is now extending that record of success, which will enhance our ability to find potentially hazardous asteroids, and support the new...

Scientists using data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, have uncovered new clues in the ongoing mystery of the Jovian Trojans -- asteroids that orbit the sun on the same path as Jupiter. Like racehorses, the asteroids travel in packs, with one group leading the way in front of the gas giant, and a second group trailing behind. The observations are the first to get a detailed look at the Trojans' colors: both the leading and trailing packs are made up of predominantly dark, reddish rocks with a matte, non-reflecting surface. What's more, the data verify the previous...

Explanation: Though the sizes are not to scale, the Sun and planets of the inner solar system are shown in this illustration, where each red dot represents an asteroid. New results from NEOWISE, the infrared asteroid hunting portion of the WISE mission, are shown on the left compared to old population projections of mid-size or larger near-Earth asteroids from surveys at visible wavelengths. And the good news is, NEOWISE observations estimate there are 40 percent fewer near-Earth asteroids that are larger than 100 meters (330 feet), than indicated by visible light searches. Based on infrared imaging, the NEOWISE results are...