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New Delhi : This is after many years that you can see a comet with your naked eye in Earth’s night sky, a rare celestial event that occurs after many years.
Nehru Science Centre in its ‘Lockdown Lecture’ series organised ‘Comet NEOWISE – A Primer’ to discuss the exploration aspects related to comets. Director, Nehru Planetarium, New Delhi, Dr N Ratnashree, explained comets, their position in the sky and how one can observe a comet through a telescope, DSLR camera or even naked eye.
Comet Neowise officially known as C/2020F3 is the brightest comet that can be seen in the sky and will be visible across the globe as it is closest to the earth these days. The Neowise, once disappears will be visible only after 6800 years, according to a PIB release.
‘Comet Neowise’ was first spotted by NASA’s spacecraft mission Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) on March 27, 2020, and hence the name NEOWISE.
Comet is an icy small body which consists mostly of rocky materials, dust and ice. As they come closer to the sun there is evaporation of volatile contents from these comets. When they start melting, the particles start glowing by the reflected sunlight. This makes the ‘dust tail’ of Comets.
Dr N Ratnashree told, “the Neowise comet has been found close to the sun during early July, which came in the view of NASA’s solar mission SOHO, which exclusively studies the sun and its activities. India also has a similar space venture Aditya-L1 mission which is due to go up in the sky, to study the corona of the Sun.” She also shared images captured by amateur astronomers across the country at different points of time during July 2020. She even mentioned how the comet has been visible in cities that have high light pollution.
During her lecture Dr Ratnashree spoke in detail about locating the comet and capturing it through a DSLR camera. “Point your camera towards North West direction and try to take a long exposure shot. Try clicking regular photographs on different days at the same time with the same camera settings to find out the trajectory of the comet in relation to the horizon,” she said.