NEOWISE (Near‑Earth Object Wide‑field Infrared Survey Explorer) is a NASA mission that repurposed the WISE spacecraft, initially launched in 2009, to detect and characterize asteroids and comets. Using infrared sensors operating at 3.4 and 4.6 µm wavelengths, NEOWISE has cataloged hundreds of thousands of minor planets—including Near‑Earth Objects—providing critical data on their sizes, orbits, and compositions.
Source: science.nasa.gov
26/07/2022
This sight was worth getting out of bed early. Two years ago this month, Comet C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) rose before dawn to the delight of northern sky enthusiasts awake that early. Up before sunrise on July 8th, the featured photographer was able to capture in dramatic fashion one of the few comets visible to the unaided eye this century, an inner-Solar System intruder that has become known as the Great Comet of 2020. The resulting video detailed Comet NEOWISE from Italy rising over the Adriatic Sea. The time-lapse video combines over 240 images taken over 30 minutes. The comet was seen rising through a foreground of bright and undulating noctilucent clouds, and before a background of distant stars. Comet NEOWISE remained unexpectedly bright until 2020 August, with its ion and dust tails found to emanate from a nucleus spanning about five kilometers across. Astrophysicists: Browse 2,800+ codes in the Astrophysics Source Code Library