The comet is known as Comet C/2020 F3 NEOWISE — or just NEOWISE for short.

“In the discovery images, it immediately was obvious that something was up,” Amy Mainzer, the principal investigator for NEOWISE at the University of Arizona, tells The Verge!

These ices are pretty well mixed throughout a comet, and it’s this material that gives comets their trademark fuzzy tails.

NEOWISE is a pretty sizable comet, too, measuring about 3 miles (or 5 kilometers) across, which is why we can get this great view of it from Earth.

“You take something that’s a really big hunk of ice and rock all mixed together, and you park it very close to the Sun, it’s gonna set off some fireworks,” says Mainzer.

“Once in our lifetimes and our great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandkids’ lifetimes,” jokes Mainzer.

For much of last week, NEOWISE has been showing up just above the northeastern horizon, about an hour or so before sunrise in the Northern Hemisphere.

Mainzer expects the comet to be visible for at least another week, maybe even longer.

“Comets are very funny, fickle creatures, and it really depends on what this comet decides to do or what it does in reaction to this close passage by the Sun,” says Mainzer.

NEOWISE is cruising steadily away from the Sun, and eventually, it’ll disappear from view, never to be seen by our generation again

The bright tail will drop away as the comet gets farther away from our Solar System’s heat source