Catch The Bright, Newly-Discovered NEOWISE Comet Streaking In The Sky Above Utah This Week
By Catherine Armstrong|Published July 14, 2020
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Catherine Armstrong
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Writer, editor and researcher with a passion for exploring new places. Catherine loves local bookstores, independent films, and spending time with her family, including Gus the golden retriever, who is a very good boy.
If you look to the heavens this week, you might catch a glimpse of a bright comet streaking across the sky above Utah. The NEOWISE Comet was recently discovered, thanks to a telescope built right here in Utah, and you’re going to want to see it now because it won’t be visible again during your lifetime.
The night skies above Utah are simply stunning, especially when viewed from one of our International Dark Sky Parks, but you should be able to see this bright comet just about anywhere that has low light pollution.
This cool shot of the comet was taken on July 10th at the Bonneville Salt Flats. The photographer woke up early - he captured this image between 3:15 a.m. and 4 a.m.!
Scientists say that the last time this comet was visible to humans on the planet was around 9,000 years ago, and it won't pass by Earth close enough to see it again for about another 6,800 years.
Until March, 2020, we didn't even know that this comet existed! In 2009, a Utah company, Space Dynamics Lab, created a telescope that they named the WISE (Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer). They launched it into space and put it to work.
In 2013, NASA woke WISE back up with a new mission. They tasked it with the mission of finding asteroids and comets that could potentially reach Earth's orbit, and they gave it a new name: NEOWISE (Near Earth Object WISE).
On March 27, 2020, NEOWISE spotted a blazing comet at the far edges of the universe. It was named Comet C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE), but pretty much everyone just calls it NEOWISE, after the telescope that discovered it.
The comet will come closest to Earth on July 22, 2020 - just a mere 64 million miles away. As we get closer to that date, it will be easiest to view the comet in the evening, about an hour after the sun sets.
A special thanks to Alan Day, a member of our Utah Nature Lovers Facebook Group, who took some of the photos in this article and gave us permission to share them with you. If you love to see pretty pics of the Beehive State, and would like to post your own, join our group today!
Have you seen the NEOWISE Comet streaking through the sky above Utah? We’d love to see your photos in the comments!
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