101 Things – COMETS!
Comets are (essentially) massive dirty, icy snowballs thought to mostly originate from the “Oort Cloud” at the far reaches of the solar system. 2,000 to 200,000 AU distant from the sun, this great big spherical(ish) cloud of objects, leftovers from the creation of our solar system, bimble about minding their own business, until a passing star gives them a gravitational nudge towards our sun – a journey that maybe takes millions of years. (AU=Astronomical Units=the distance from the Earth to the Sun). As they approach the sun, the heat begins to boil the ice into great bit trails of material – the comet’s tail, and if we’re really lucky we can see them in our night sky fro m time to time. One such comet is visible after dawn in our Northern skies right now, and this is how to spot it. Watch the video – link below, to find out more.
C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE)
Comet Neowise is naked eye visible right now! (July 2020) and this will shortly be a blog post about it.
