Meet Comet NEOWISE!

by Joan Marie Galat

A comet, often called a dirty snowball, is a frozen collection of rock, dust, and gases that orbits the Sun. When a comet approaches the Sun, heat causes the comet's shape to change. Frozen gases thaw, creating a tail that can stretch millions of kilometres into space. Now the comet looks like another one of its nicknames—a long-haired star!

    Night sky observers have been aware of comets for a very long time. Chinese astronomers kept records that show Halley’s Comet was observed in 240 B.C. Scientists are very interested in studying comets because they formed at the same time as our solar system. Their research may help scientists understand how the building blocks of life reached Earth.

    An exciting new comet was discovered on March 27, 2020. Visible with the naked eye from a dark location, the new comet, named NEOWISE, is five kilometres (three miles) wide, with a tail stretching hundreds to thousands of kilometres. Its name comes from the initials of NASA’s satellite observatory: the Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer. Though billions of comets exist, Comet NEOWISE is one of only 3,655 identified comets.

 

Observe NEOWISE

In the northern hemisphere, NEOWISE is visible in the northwest sky after sunset. You can find it in the vicinity of the Big Dipper. I was able to spot it with binoculars, which made it appear like a great, pale smudge across the sky. A telescope brings it into better focus, as seen in this photo taken near Cold Lake, Alberta, by Shaula Corr of aurorasbycorr.com(Visit Shaula's website to view more comet images. You can even order a framed print.)

    NASA offers tips on how to view NEOWISE, which will appear higher in the sky into August. Look soon because the comet is already dimming as it travels to the outer region of the solar system. Once it is out of sight, NEOWISE will not reappear for another 6800 years.

 

Quick Facts about Comets 

- Comets have egg-shaped orbits. 

- When a comet travels far enough away from the Sun, its tail will disappear.

 

- A comet that gets too close to a planet or the Sun may crash into it! 

 

-The center of a comet, called its nucleus, can be the size of a small town. When a comet gets close to the Sun, its head will grow larger than most planets.

 

- Meteor showers, which can last from hours to days, occur when Earth passes through a part of the sky where a comet left behind dust particles. That’s why meteor showers are visible around the same dates every year. 

 

Discover More about Space

I had the pleasure of writing about comets in my most recent book:  (National Geographic Kids). To discover how to go "dot-to-dot in the-sky" to use the constellations as a map to find comets and other night sky objects, see these titles in my You will also find tips for spotting meteors. Next time you see one, think of the comets that have passed through our part of the universe. Space is an amazing place!

Joan Marie Galat is the author of more than 20 books for children and adults. Many of her titles focus on astronomy, space, and other STEM/STEAM topics.

Getting the Science Right

By Joan Marie Galat

How far will an author go to get her facts straight? In my case, it was a nearly-4000-kilometre round trip from my home in Alberta to Laramie, Wyoming. The program, called Launch Pad Astronomy, is a week-long workshop designed specifically for science-writing authors. It was established to make sure writers present science accurately when creating stories or writing nonfiction.

Whether you are reading a book or watching a movie, television show, or other media, it is not hard to get caught up in the story and assume it reflects genuine scientific principles. Launch Pad helps writers avoid presenting or creating misconceptions. Here are a few examples of how science can crop up in creative writing, followed by an explanation of why the scientific reference just won’t work. You will see how easy it is for even a well-intentioned writer to misstep.

• It was 6 am, too early for the courier to arrive with the first copies of Joan’s new middle-grade (and up) book: Dark Matters-Nature’s Reaction to Light Pollution. She took one last glance at the rising Full Moon and turned inside.
  SCIENCE FAIL: The Full Moon only rises at sunset.


• It had been dark for several hours. The courier was lost. His GPS battery was dead and his charger not working since it fell into a milkshake. Pulling over, he looked for the brightest star in the sky, certain the North Star would guide him home.
  SCIENCE FAIL: The North Star is not the brightest star in the sky.


• The courier remembered he needed to call his mother for her birthday. His cell phone was dead and the charger — well, you don’t want to know. Not wanting to admit his shortcomings, he decided upon an excuse. He would say he burned his hand when picking up a meteorite that had landed when he was searching for the North Star.

  

  Meteorite
  Photo credit: NASA/SETI/P. Jenniskens

  
  SCIENCE FAIL: It’s not common to find meteorites within seconds of them landing on the ground. Little is known about the immediate temperature of new meteorites, however scientists generally believe small rocks from space will be cool or only slightly warm upon striking the Earth.

Other common misconceptions abound about why seasons occur, the strength of gravity on the Moon, the direction a comet's tail will face, and other topics. The Smithsonian’s “Science Done Wrong” offers additional compelling examples.

Next time you read a book or watch a movie, consider whether the science is accurate and conduct a bit of research of your own to find out what is fact and what is fiction. If you’re a fellow author, consider applying to attend Launch Pad Astronomy. It is an experience you won’t want to miss.


Joan Marie Galat is the author of more than a dozen books, including the Dot to Dot in the Sky astronomy and mythology series. Science talks have taken her from the Arctic Circle to South Korea. Check out her book trailers and speaker demo.

Book Review: When Planet Earth Was New

It’s hard to say a lot about a book that has only 300 words. It’s elegant. It’s simple. It’s a look at billions of years of Earth’s natural history in 16 images.

This picture book is made up of engaging stylized art accompanied by super-simple text with a touch of the poetic. I would love to have a little kid again to read this to. It is accurate, but accessible. Images are full of action. Gladstone wrote about complex things using words are short and common; though a parent might have to explain “evolve,” it is a common word. Sentences hover around 10 words.

“The earth cooled slowly — so slowly…”

While this book doesn’t have the resilience of a board book, I’d much rather have read this to my son than Goodnight Moon every night for four years, even before he knew what the words meant. We would look at all the scenes, talking about what is shown, how long a million is, whether humans rode dinosaurs (they didn’t, and the text makes it clear that the two creatures are separated by several pages). We would use the folio at the end to guide discovery of each image, making it a scavenger hunt as we spot more detail. A glossary and list of related websites would help me explain even more and guide that little learner where their curiosity leads.

Diemert created the art with ink, collage, and digital media. She made every image active and engaging and full of detail that kids will love to discover every single night. Even the spread showing a dinosaur skeleton in the desert has an active tiny creature kids can imagine a story for.

The book leaves us with a sense that though Earth’s journey was long, it’s not over. Little minds will wonder where it might lead, and they’ll repeat the poetic words making them part of the family lexicon.

Recommended for kids from 1 to 8.

by James Gladstone, illustrations by Katherine Diemert

36 pages, OwlKids Books

Images from the book reproduced with permission of OwlKids Books.

Astronomy Before Bedtime

Photo by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center showing a C3-class solar flare that erupted from sunspot 1105 on Sept. 8, 2010. Used under CCBY-2.0 license.

by Adrienne Montgomerie

“I really like astronomy, but I can’t stay up that late,” I said to the astronomer I met the other day.

“Lucky for me,” he said. “I do my astronomy during the daytime. Only optical astronomy really requires a night sky — and that's only for ground-based telescopes!” Then Drew the astronomy PhD student at Queen’s University went on to tell me about radio telescopy and telescopes out in space.

Light is part of the EM spectrum, and so are X-rays and radio waves. Astronomers can look for the X-rays and radio waves given off by stars and planets to learn what they are made of and how they behave. That method works even when daylight obscures the objects.

A couple years earlier, I met the team from RMC (the Royal Military College) who study stars in daylight. Their specialty is the Sun!

  

Beginning Daylight Astronomy

The easiest targets are our own Sun and Moon. You can watch the Moon with your bare eyes and observe how its shape changes from crescent to fully round and back to crescent. With a pair of binoculars, you can zoom in on the craters and other features that show the Moon’s history of being hit by space rocks. A telescope lets you see even more detail.

You can observe the how the Sun’s path across the sky changes with the seasons. But you can learn more about the Sun itself.

It can damage your eyes to look straight at the Sun, but there are filters that fit over a telescope to make observing the Sun safe. One really fun time to observe the Sun is during a solar eclipse, but even with most of the light blocked by the Moon, it’s still unsafe to look directly at the Sun. One easy trick is to have a telescope project the image of the Sun onto a piece of paper. With your back to the Sun, put paper below the telescope’s eye piece. You can then look at the Sun on the paper.

  

Events in the Daytime Sky

On August 21, 2017 there will be a total solar eclipse visible from coast to coast in the USA. It is only visible where the shadow meets Earth, so not everyone will see it.

An eclipse is a great time to get a better look at the Sun’s corona. Because the Moon blocks most of the Sun during an eclipse, it makes the remaining part easier to see. The outer edge (corona) is where you can see great tongues of fire exploding from the star (like in this picture). Those are called flares and they can be as powerful as 1 billion megatons of TNT! Solar flares are what send electromagnetic waves outward from the Sun. When they reach Earth, they cause Northern Lights (and Southern Lights, too). When there’s a big solar flare, you can watch for signs of it affecting Earth a few days later. It’s not just pretty lights that solar flares cause. Sometimes that radiation interferes with radio and power transmission here on Earth.

Lunar eclipses sometimes happen during the day, too. It’s not as dramatic as a nighttime eclipse, but you can see Earth’s shadow take a bite out of the Moon. You can see that without anything but your eyes.

To learn more about astronomy, check the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (RASC) and Sky News magazine. 

Adrienne Montgomerie is a science and education editor who helps publishers and businesses develop training resources. She believes we can make even the most complex ideas and procedures easy for learners to take in, maybe even to master.