C/2020 F3 NEOWISE , a new comet discovered by NASA’s Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer telescope has been clearly visible to the naked eye from July 14 in parts of northern hemisphere. The comet was discovered on March 27.
Although binoculars or a telescope will provide a better view, the comet can also be seen without them and is said to be best visible half an hour before sunrise and after sunset.
Dr. Subhendu Pattnaik, Deputy Director of Pathani Samanta Planetarium, Odisha had earlier said that the comet will be visible in the north western part of the sky from July 14 after sunset for around 20 minutes for the next 20 days.
In the coming days, it will rapidly climb higher in the sky. Around 30th July it can be seen near Ursha Major (Saptarshi Mandal) for an hour. A pair of binoculars or a small telescope can enhance its visibility. After July it will fade away very fast and will not be visible,” he had said.
The comet is likely to get brighter in the next coming days as it nears the sun. It is called 21st century comet because People often refer to extremely bright comets as “comets of the century”. The last comet that was termed so was Comet Hale-Bopp in 1997.
Comets are cosmic snow balls of frozen gases, rock, and dust that orbit the Sun in a highly elliptical path. In frozen condition, they are the size of a few hundred kilometres may be compared with the size of a small town. As they approach the sun, they heat up and melt to form a tail that stretches away from the Sun for millions of kilometres in the opposite direction. There are likely billions of comets orbiting our Sun in the Kuiper Belt and in the periphery of our solar system – the Oort Cloud.