A distant visitor

 

https://www.mychamplainvalley.com/news/local-news/timelapse-comet-a3-seen-over-our-regions-night-sky/

Over a thousand times farther out than Jupiter lies from Earth, there is a collection of tiny icy bodies (each just a few miles wide).  They are so far apart and so distant no one will ever take a picture of them as a collection (known as the Oort cloud).  Before the dawn of modern man on Earth, one particular icy body was gravitationally nudged towards the Sun.  Slowly, over the course of thousands of years it gained speed as it fell towards the Sun.   Dark and unnoticed, all of human history unfolded while it silently fell.  

As it closed in on the Sun, the outgassing of the Sun started to ablate its surface.  It now had a tail made of lost pieces of itself and this allowed humans to first noticed it in 2023.   It swung around the Sun last month and picked up  even more speed and is now on its way back out.  Its velocity is so great it may escape the Sun altogether, or it may swing back around in 80,000 years.  Ironically, its "tail" is now illuminated its path forward as it heads away from the Sun and the Solar Wind drives its tail away from the Sun.

When I first heard that comet A3 was visible to the naked eye, I stepped outside and trieed to spot it from my front yard.  Unfortunately trees obscured my view and there is enough light pollution here in the greater Boston area, I wasn't sure I would be able to see it anyway.  I know that a lot of the spectacular pictures taken (like those of the Auroras) are enhanced by high quality cameras or long exposure times.  I wanted to see it with my naked, unaided eyes or not at all.  There is something primal about gazing into the night sky with your own eyes, feeling directly connected to the cosmos through that stream of photons emitted so far away and absorbed by the rods in your very own retinas.  That light you see is truly for your eyes only!

On the next night, Irene and I walked to the school grounds and tried to get a better view from an open field there.  After staring for some time and using an app on my phone to help me look in the right spot, I made out the faintest of hints of the comet.  I looked away and looked back to see if I could still see that faint streak and, sure enough, it persisted.  Try as she might, Irene could not make it out.  The picture above is the closest one I have found to what I saw (all the other ones make it out to be brighter or in greater contrast).  

How adjacent we all are to the wonder of the cosmos!  All I had to do was look in the right spot a short walk from my own house and I beheld a majestic wonder older than all of mankind.

Hello and goodbye friend, you are the widest traveling object I have ever or will ever see.  Fare thee well...