Now is your chance to look up in the night sky and see one of the brightest comets in the last 30 years.
If you go outside around 3:30 a.m. and look toward the northeast, you should be able to catch a glimpse of Comet NEOWISE C/2020 F3.
Manitoba Museum planetarium astronomer Scott Young gave details on what to expect.
“Basically when the solar system was formed, there’s still leftover bits floating around out there and the ones mostly made out of rock we call asteroids, and the ones mostly made of ice we call comets. The cool thing about comets is when they come closer to the sun, that ice starts to melt. The snowball is maybe a few kilometers across – we wouldn’t even normally be able to see that at this kind of distance – but because the snow starts melting, it releases dust and gas and all sorts of material that’s trapped in there, and that flows behind it in this beautiful tail.”
Young adds that comets are very unpredictable and that NEOWISE will only be visible for the next few weeks.
For updates and more information about the comet, you can go to the museum website.
