The last few days of internet browsing or social media debating has been halted by beautiful images of the sudden and magnificent comet called Neowise!
Posts like the following have been making Facebook just a little better of a place to be, at least this week..
From the Shenandoah Sentinel:
And from SKOOK NEWS:
Equally mesmerizing photos of the comet have been actively posted by countless people across the internet and Twitter..
Photos like these, from North Dakota, Florida, and all the way to the Philippines
Here is a gallery of real time images captured of Neowise as they get sent to Space Weather.
Amazing to conjure.. this extraterrestrial light show is at a peak tonight, and tomorrow night.. By July 23 it will be heading away from our viewing pleasure on the planet Earth.
Scientists say that it will not been seen again for 7,000 more years on this planet–just think of this, when history book look back 7000 years from now, and talk about this little blip in time when a pandemic scourged the planet, it may also mention that this comet was visible ..
Speaking of pandemics, it’s equally chilling to think that Neowise was only spotted at the end of March 2020, just as the pandemic lockdowns began.
Measuring about 3 miles across, Neowise is considered a fairly large comet..
The extra burst of popularity came as it was evident that Neowise did not need a high powered telescope to see.. it was visible at times on earth by the naked eye.
It is also the brightest and most visible comet since the famed Hale Bopp of 1997.. More on that later!
NEO THE WISE!
Neowise got the name from the telescope that discovered it on March 27, 2020: The Wise Telescope, which is NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer.
To spot the comet, look below the Big Dipper in the northwest sky after sunset. Find a spot away from city lights with an unobstructed view of the sky.. the darkened countryside is best..
And just in time for the last day, here is a map from the sky of where you can see Neowise as it is most visible on July 22:
After it comes.. it goes.
The comet survived its recent closest approach to the sun, and is now headed back toward the outer solar system.
And it will be gone for 7,000 years until some future Earthly civilization, whatever exists then, spots it in the night skies.
WHICH CAME FIRST? THE COMET OR THE CULTURE
2020 is nothing less than exciting.. dire.. historical.
Comets seem to have a strange sense to appear during these moments, don’t they?
Comets play historical roles in setting humanity on certain paths.
At certain times on history, comets were seen as signs from the gods.
HISTORY AND COMETS
The Bayeux Tapestry depicts events during the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Seen here in a detail, Halley’s Comet appears over the throne of King Harald II. From how history reports this event: In 1066, the comet was seen in England and thought to be an omen: later that year Harold II of England died at the Battle of Hastings; it was a bad omen for Harold, but a good omen for the man who defeated him, William the Conqueror.
Comets even had an effect on how we view Christmas itself!
In the famous “Adoration of the Magi”, Renaissance painter Giotto di Bondone has apparently immortalized the appearance of Halley’s Comet in 1301 in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua. While the ‘Christmas Star’ is debated, this image with a bright comet racing in the background of the birth if Christ has influenced how many Christians today think the scene looked like.
This image from VANITY FAIR appeared in 1861.. It was the year of the “Great Comet,” just as the American Civil War I began.
The comet may have interacted with the Earth in an almost unprecedented way. For two days, when the comet was at its closest, the Earth was actually within the comet’s tail, and streams of cometary material converging towards the distant nucleus could be seen.. Even more:
Raphael Semmes, commander of the CSS Sumter wrote of the June 30 escape of his vessel from New Orleans:
The evening of the escape of the Sumter was one of those Gulf evenings, which can only be felt, and not described. The wind died gently away, as the sun declined, leaving a calm, and sleeping sea, to reflect a myriad of stars. The sun had gone down behind a screen of purple, and gold, and to add to the beauty of the scene, as night set in, a blazing comet, whose tail spanned nearly a quarter of the heavens, mirrored itself within a hundred feet of our little bark, as she ploughed her noiseless way through the waters
In a nation suddenly torn by civil war, Americans gazed skyward in the summer of 1861 and sought to divine meaning from the comet’s sudden appearance. “What means this visit – peace or war?” wrote the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.
The comet became known as the “war comet” …
THE FAMOUS HALE-BOPP COMET CULT
Back when major snooze magazine mattered, major news magazines placed Marshall Applewhite on their covers:
The famed Hale-Bopp cult of 1997 ended up in death..
Applewhite was an American cult leader who founded what became known as the Heaven’s Gate religious group and organized their mass suicide in 1997, claiming the lives of 39 people..
In October 1996, the group rented a mansion in Rancho Santa Fe, California. That year, they recorded two video messages in which they offered their viewers a “last chance to evacuate Earth”. Around the same time, they learned of the approach of Comet Hale–Bopp…
Perfect timing for a death cult.
In 1972, he developed a close friendship with Bonnie Nettles, a nurse; together, they discussed mysticism at length and concluded that they were called as divine messengers. And when Hale-Bopp appeared, he thought she was aboard a spaceship trailing the comet, and that she planned to rendezvous with his followers.
In late March 1997, they committed mass suicide.
Some still argue that radio talk show host Art Bell’s reports that an alien may be trailing Hale-Bopp forced the cult to believe what they did.. others don’t agree.
Art Bell–and we love him here as you know!–made a mistake on this one. This show appeared November 14, 1996. Bell begins talking Hale-Bopp at 4 minutes and 40 seconds:
hortly after Bell’s death on Friday the 13th, 2018, one website wrote,
Bell’s willingness to give a soapbox to pseudoscience may have played a role in the death of 39 members of the Heaven’s Gate cult who committed mass suicide in 1997 in the belief they would be transported to an extraterrestrial spacecraft that was following a comet called Hale-Bopp. Bell had hosted guests who had promoted the bogus story, although he removed all evidence of it after the horrific event.
And the strangest thing? The http://www.heavensgate.com/ website still works!
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Back to NEOWISE
There are no death cults *(that we know of)*.. but there are some strange and amazing events in 2020.
And with history showcasing how comets have so often come during historical events, why not 2020, right? … why not.
Add 2020 to that rolling list of … moments during historical comets. It fits.
