Unfortunately, my Canon t3i DSLR camera is broken right now and I've been told to expect to wait 6 to 8 weeks to get my camera back :-(
With no DSLR I can't photograph the comet and by the time I get my camera it will be gone.
Oh well, there's always comet ISON.
Oh well, there's always comet ISON.
In the meantime others have been getting great images. Alan Dyer shot this in the twilight of August 12 with the freshly waxing crescent moon. Check out Alan's photo blog. The moon's dark side is lit by the brilliant shine of the fully illuminated Earth in its night sky.
The comet glows to its left. The comet's icy nucleus is shrouded by a tenuous and temporary atmosphere called the coma. Gas and dust from the coma get blown away by the Sun's particle and electromagnetic radiation. Although the source of this debris, the nucleus, is only about 1 kilometer across, the comet's tail extends hundreds of thousands of kilometers into space away from the Sun.
The comet's course is now taking it further from the Sun after it's perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) on March 10. The position of the comet relative to Alpheratz, a bright star in the constellation Andromeda near which Panstaars can be found, was noticeably different between today and yesterday.
It's not every day you get to watch the erosion of a frozen time capsule from the origin of our solar system as it makes a daringly close approach to our blazing star. I watched it through the telescope as it set behind a snowy and rocky mountain peak lit by the waxing gibbous moon. Looking at a mountain of ice and rock and its accompanying debris behind another mountain that's 10 million times closer gives a twinkle of comprehension of the scale of our planetary system.
And if the upcoming comet ISON lives up to even some of the more conservative predictions we should be in for quite a treat in November and December this year. More on that later...
No comments:
Post a Comment