I missed this one last month, but there was a comet discovered on November 27 of last year by Australian amateur astronomer Terry Lovejoy that passed by earth in mid to late december around Christmas.
Note how the tail of the comet points away from the Sun even as the comet itself is moving in the same direction, away from our star. Every comet has two tails, one of ice and dust, the other of ions, or charged particles. The heat and pressure of sunlight sloughs off the ice and dust, pushing it away from the Sun. Likewise, the solar wind strips ions off of the comet surface, though not necessarily in the same direction as the tail of debris and ice. The ion tail is not visible in this image. (NASA Earh Observatory)
They took a number of still images as the comet passed and compiled them into a video. Check it out:
NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center on Flickr has more images. Click the image below to view them.
NASA’s Goddard Photo and Video Flickr feed also has some time lapse videos of Lovejoy approaching the sun and entering the Sun’s Corona on their Flickr Feed. Check out the one below.
More info on comets
- Wikipedia article on Comet Lovejoy
- What is a comet?
- Lovejoy passed through the Sun’s corona before heading back out into the solar system. The corona is like an atmosphere, the air and clouds on earth, except is extends millions of kilometers out into space and is made of ionized gas called Plasma. Read More
- Lovejoy is a “Sungrazing Comet” meaning is comes VERY close to the sun. Sungrazing comets can potentially be completely vaporized by the energy from the sun. More info
-Mike
Source: Triggerpit.com
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