Spectacular Sighting of Comet NEOWISE Over Athens

Comet NEOWISE put on a spectacular show for skywatchers over Athens early on Thursday morning.

Alexandros Maragos, an Athens-based, award-winning filmmaker and photographer, captured the passage of the comet over the Greek capital at 05:00 local time, about an hour before sunrise.

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A #comet over #Athens! Comet C/2020 F3 #neowise shining over the #city and mount Pentelicus on July 9, 2020 at 5:00am, 1 hour before #sunrise. The comet is visible with naked eye.⁣ ⁣ NEOWISE is a retrograde comet with a near-parabolic orbit discovered on March 27, 2020 by the NEOWISE telescope.⁣ ⁣ #space #earth #universe #nasa #sky #astronomy #astrophotography #science #greece #alexandrosmaragos

A post shared by Alexandros Maragos (@alexmaragos) on Jul 8, 2020 at 11:17pm PDT

NEOWISE was just discovered on March 27 of this year by researchers analyzing imagery captured by NASA’s Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer spacecraft (hence the name).

NEOWISE passed closest to the Sun on July 3, 2020. Closest approach to Earth will occur July 23, 2020 at a distance of 103 million km (64,001,232 miles).

The current viewing opportunity represents your only shot to get a look at the long-period comet, which won’t be back in our neck of the cosmic woods for thousands of years, Space.com, reports.