Comet NEOWISE was first observed by NASA's
Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE)
spacecraft on Valentine's Day, 2014. Full image and caption
NASA's Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer
(NEOWISE) spacecraft has spotted a never-before-seen comet -- its first
such discovery since coming out of hibernation late last year.
"We are so pleased to have discovered this frozen visitor from the
outermost reaches of our solar system," said Amy Mainzer, the mission's
principal investigator from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in
Pasadena, Calif. "This comet is a weirdo - it is in a retrograde orbit,
meaning that it orbits the sun in the opposite sense from Earth and the
other planets."
Officially named "C/2014 C3 (NEOWISE)", the first comet discovery of the
renewed mission came on Feb. 14 when the comet was about 143 million
miles (230 million kilometers) from Earth. Although the comet's orbit
is still a bit uncertain, it appears to have arrived from its most
distant point in the region of the outer planets. The mission's
sophisticated software picked out the moving object against a background
of stationary stars. As NEOWISE circled Earth, scanning the sky, it
observed the comet six times over half a day before the object moved out
of its view. The discovery was confirmed by the Minor Planet Center,
Cambridge, Mass., when follow-up observations were received three days
later from the Near Earth Object Observation project Spacewatch, Tucson,
Ariz. Other follow-up observations were then quickly received. While
this is the first comet NEOWISE has discovered since coming out of
hibernation, the spacecraft is credited with the discovery of 21 other
comets during its primary mission.
Originally called the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), the
spacecraft was shut down in 2011 after its primary mission was
completed. In September 2013, it was reactivated, renamed NEOWISE and
assigned a new mission to assist NASA's efforts to identify the
population of potentially hazardous near-Earth objects. NEOWISE will
also characterize previously known asteroids and comets to better
understand their sizes and compositions.
JPL manages the NEOWISE mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate
in Washington. The Space Dynamics Laboratory in Logan, Utah, built the
science instrument. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. of Boulder,
Colo., built the spacecraft. Science operations and data processing take
place at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California
Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.
More information on NEOWISE is online at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/wise/ .
