Fire in the Sky

The evening of Monday, March 25, 1996 was crisply cold and clear.  It was quite late. With an early alarm and at least 10 hours of work ahead of me the next day what was I doing driving out of St. Louis toward the dark farm fields of rural Illinois?  The answer, of course, is love. 

I love my husband and he loves astronomy.  We were going to see Comet Hyakutake, an interplanetary traveler who had taken everyone by surprise.  What I saw took my breath away.  Comet Hyakutake was brighter than most stars (magnitude zero on a scale where the smaller the number the brighter the object), with a coma larger than the moon.  Its tail covered 80 degrees of arc; you could not see it all without moving your eyes along its length.  Near the zenith, it was so close you could see it move against the star field!  It had a bluish-green color due to its emissions of diatomic carbon.  Celestial beauty does not come any rarer.  

This unannounced visitor had not been near Earth for at least 70,000 years.  That long ago, Mt. Toba in Indonesia had exploded, altering the climate and creating a population bottleneck by killing all but about 15,000 humans.  We did not know Hyakutake was coming until it was sited by a Japanese astronomer on January 31, 1996.  Adding to the amazing surprise of the comet was the fact that it was coming fast and it was close!  Hyakutake came within 10 million miles of the Earth.  That is the astronomical equivalent of a bow shot.   By comparison, Comet Hale-Bopp was 13 times farther from the planet than Hyakutake. 

Carl Sagan described comets as dirty ice balls.  They are.  The nucleus of a comet is a conglomerate of frozen ice, dust and gas bigger than a small town.   They originate in the Oort Cloud beyond the edge of our solar system.  They travel in long, elliptical orbits around the sun.  As the comet approaches the sun its nucleus heats up and its coma swells larger than our planet and spews off loosened dust and gasses into its tail.  Pressure from the sun’s photons and high-speed solar particles (the solar wind) pushes the tails ejecta away from the sun.  Even if the comet is moving away from the sun, the tail will still move away from the sun and precede the comet.  It is a flag, not a contrail. 

The meteor showers that we enjoy throughout the year are caused when Earth crosses the path of comet debris left in our orbit. 

That leaves us with the current comet that you can enjoy in the early morning or early evening hours.  Look below the big dipper near the horizon.  It is not as dramatic as Hyakutake, but it is still a space traveler with size, history and a lovely pearly glow.  It is Comet C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE).  Its name is certainly more technical than romantic.  But it also speaks to an interesting advance in scientific research.  This comet was not discovered by an individual, which would give that person the right to name the comet after him/her, like Hale-Bopp and Shoemaker-Levy.  Instead, NEOWISE in a Near Earth Object discovered by our Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE).  We are now actively looking for comets, asteroids and other objects which could (and some day will) collide with our planet and make our current problems look like starter dough.  This comet is not the one.  Its parabolic orbit is now taking it away from the sun and will be visible in some form or another until the end of September.  It will not be back for around 6,000 years. 

Since science seems to be the subject that Americans are least at home with (after economics) the emergence of a visible comet will undoubtedly be met with cries of gloom and doom.  The apocalyptically inclined, who were sorely disappointed when the Mayan’s didn’t correctly call the end of the world on 12/12/’12, will shift their energies to the comet NEOWISE.  It is curious that the doomsayers cry “We’re all going to die.” and then buy dried food and generators.  One pretty much precludes the need for the other.  But they are also stocking up on toilet paper for a corona virus that attacks the lungs.  Go figure.

Personally, I choose not to worry about things I can not control. My efforts for the next few months will be spent on those things I can change. 

Enjoy the music of the spheres and keep the faith.    

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