Taipei, July 9 (CNA) Astronomical buffs may want to get up early in the morning to catch an extremely bright comet named C/2020 F3 NEOWISE in the next few days, the Taipei Astronomical Museum said Thursday.
"Every three to four years or so we can expect a comet which is bright enough to be caught by binoculars. It is very rare for us to see a comet as bright as Comet NEOWISE," said museum researcher Lee Chin (李瑾).
The comet, named after the space telescope that discovered it in March, will be the brightest comet visible in Taiwan in the last 20 years, according to the museum.
The best way to get a glimpse of NEOWISE is to look to the northeastern sky near the horizon before dawn, Lee said.
The magnitude measures the brightness of a celestial body as seen by an observer on Earth and falls in value the brighter an object becomes.
Observation conditions for the comet should remain ideal until the end of this week as it passes away from the sun, Lee said.
Comet NEOWISE, which reached its closest to the sun on July 3, will not be visible again until sometime after mid-July, when it will reverse its schedule and appear after sunset in the northwest, Lee said.
Night owls could have their moment then, and the comet will appear higher on the sky and be visible longer, but possibly be darker, he said.
The comet will not be visible again for another 4,000 to 6,000 years, Lee said.
According to a NASA report, the comet was described as about 5 kilometers across, with its nucleus covered with sooty, dark particles left over from its formation near the birth of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago.
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2020-07-09 12:27:00Z
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