The Lights Roving Around Us

Yesterday, for the first time in months, I sat out in my hot tub long before sunrise.  I found myself surrounded by all the customary stars, but also more striking things.

Comet NEOWISE surprised me.  The comet, and its long lighted tail, can easily be found in the north, just a little below and off to the right of the Big Dipper.  The comet looks very much like a long brushstroke of light painted just above the horizon.

NEOWISE does not visit us often.  Give or take a few seconds, the comet will not flick across our view for another 6,800 years.  Comprised of nearly equal parts water and dust, the comet’s tail is nothing more than dust and gasses trailing along.  The comet itself is about three miles across and zipping along at 40 miles per second.

At present, the comet is about 70 million miles from my hot tub.  Comet NEOWISE earned its name by being discovered in March by the infrared-optimized NEOWISE spacecraft (the name is short for Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Space Explorer).

As I relaxed amid wisps of steam, I thought: “All I need now is to see a shooting star.”  I allowed my eyes to drift up higher into the dome of night above me.  No more than three or four seconds after I entertained this thought, a shooting star brushed a fleeting streak of sparkles across the array of stars directly above me.

Nice.

Really nice.

I sat back and took in all the stars.  Among them, I detected specks of light crisscrossing the sky in perfectly straight lines.   Manmade contrivances, those.  Satellites showering electronic impulses down upon us.

Manmade, and otherwise, I bathed there in in a pool of warm water and roving lights.   

—Mitchell Hegman

Comet Information Source: space.com