After a few days hiatus because of a full house and a scarcity of photos during the past week, I found this one popping up in my photo feed.
The comet NEOWISE was a newly discovered comet that was visible to the naked eye even in urban light areas. Tom and I found a park along the northern edge of the city on a clear night to venture out to see if we could find it. We did. I took the photo with my IPhone, and love how it looks a bit like a Van Gogh painting. With binoculars we could clearly see the tail. We went out a few more nights that July to see it again.
It was the brightest comet to be seen since Hale-Bopp in 1997, and gave us all a little excitement in the dreary Covid-clad summer of 2020, when activities were few and far between. A bright spot in the sky and in life, if only for a few weeks. A little excitement during mundane days of social distancing and staying home. It is amazing to me how the universe gives in small ways. NEOWISE was just what we needed that summer to break up the monotony of Covid life. If we had been in our usual summer slog of working, traveling, up-to-our-eyeballs flurry of full days and evenings, we may have never paid that much attention to the celestial activities of the night sky. We may have missed this opportunity to explore a seldom seen occurrence.
It is so true that sometimes we need to slow down to see things that are right in front of our eyes.