January 12, 2018
In the grand ledger of cosmic time, a human life is breathtakingly brief. But brevity is not insignificance.
Blue Comet PanSTARRS
Birthday · January 12, 2018
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APOD published January 12, 2018. Credit: Damian Peach. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
Discovered with the PanSTARRS telescope on September 7, 2016, this Comet PanSTARRS, C/2016 R2, is presently about 24 light minutes (3 AU) from the Sun, sweeping through planet Earth's skies across the background of stars in the constellation Taurus. An inbound visitor from our Solar System's distant Oort Cloud, its beautiful and complex ion tail is a remarkable shade of blue. Still relatively far from the Sun, the comet's already well-developed ion tail is very impressive. Emission from unusually abundant ionized carbon monoxide (CO+) molecules fluorescing in the increasing sunlight is largely responsible for the pretty blue tint. This color image of the blue comet is a combination of data taken from two different telescopes during the night of January 7. Located at the apex of the V-shaped Hyades star cluster in Taurus, bright star Gamma Tauri is responsible for the glow at the bottom left corner of the frame.
Image credit: Damian Peach