unrequitedsilences: nytimes A newly discovered comet made its closest pass to the Earth on Tuesday,
unrequitedsilences: nytimes A newly discovered comet made its closest pass to the Earth on Tuesday, at a distance of 52 million miles — a little more than half the distance from Earth to the sun. Comet SWAN is currently streaking through the constellation Pisces. If you are fortunate to live in the Southern hemisphere and can find Pisces, you can see this comet — a chunk of dirty, very old ice shedding gas and dust as it nears the sun — as a pinpoint of light, about as bright as the dimmest stars visible to the naked eye. In photographs taken by delighted amateur and professional astronomers, however, the comet has a fuzzy greenish-yellowish head, with a thin squiggly blue tail some 10 million miles long. Click the link in our bio for a guide to viewing #CometSWAN in the night skies. Photo courtesy Damian Peach, Chilescope Observatory. -- source link