NASA to give an update on Comet Neowise.

[Carole]

July 14, 2020
MEDIA ADVISORY M20-082

NASA to Highlight Comet NEOWISE with Public Broadcast, Media Teleconference
NASA experts will discuss and answer public questions about Comet C/2020 F3 NEOWISE during a broadcast of NASA Science Live and follow up media teleconference on Wednesday, July 15. The comet is visible with the naked-eye in the early morning sky and starting this week, after sunset.

The NASA Science Live episode will air live at 3 p.m. EDT Wednesday (Think this is 8pm UK time) on NASA Television and the agency's website, along with Facebook Live, YouTube, Periscope, LinkedIn, Twitch, and USTREAM.

Viewers can submit questions on Twitter using the hashtag #AskNASA or by leaving a comment in the chat section of Facebook, Periscope, or YouTube.

NASA will follow the broadcast with a media teleconference at 4 p.m. Wednesday. The media teleconference audio will stream live at:

https://www.nasa.gov/live

The teleconference participants include:

Lindley Johnson, planetary defense officer and program executive of NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office, NASA Headquarters
Emily Kramer, co-investigator on the Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) science team, NASA JPL
Amy Mainzer, NEOWISE principal investigator, University of Arizona

To participate in the teleconference, media must email their name and affiliation to joshua.a.handal@nasa.gov by 3:45 p.m. Wednesday, July 15.

For information about NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office, including its Near-Earth Object Observation Program, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/planetarydefense

-end-

Joshua Handal / Grey Hautaluoma
Headquarters, Washington
202-374-9832 / 202-358-0668
joshua.a.handal@nasa.gov / grey.hautaluoma-1@nasa.gov

Last Updated: July 14, 2020
Editor: Sean Potter

[Rick]

What created the unusual red tail in Comet NEOWISE?

APOD: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap210308.html

[Carole]

Wow, didn't know about the red rail.

Carole

[Rick]

Probably a tricky one to image, especially if you're using a light-pollution filter which suppresses Sodium lines. Be interesting to know how much effort it took to capture clearly.

[Roberto]

I think it is colour rendered to represent the emission lines.

Roberto

[Rick]

Apparently the light from neutral sodium is generated by a process called Resonance Fluorescence (check that one on Wikipedia...), and sodium is one of the few elements that fluoresce brightly enough to be seen. There seems also to be a connection with the comet being close to the Sun.

(I didn't find much about neutral sodium comet tails pitched much below PhD level...)