Close Comet and the Milky Way
Explanation:
Comet 252P/Linear's
lovely greenish coma is easy to spot in this expansive southern skyscape.
Visible to the naked eye from the
dark site near
Flinders, Victoria, Australia, the comet appears tailless.
Still, its surprisingly bright coma spans about 1 degree, posed
here below the nebulae, stars, and dark rifts of the Milky Way.
The five panels used in the wide-field mosaic were captured after moonset
and before morning twilight on March 21.
That was less than 24 hours from the comet's closest
approach, a mere 5.3 million kilometers
from our fair planet.
Sweeping quickly across the sky because it is so close to Earth,
the comet should be spotted in the coming days by
northern hemisphere
comet watchers.
In predawn but moonlit skies it will move through
Sagittarius and Scorpius seen toward the southern horizon.
That's near the triangle formed by bright, yellowish, Mars, Saturn, and
Antares at the upper left
of this frame.
Authors & editors:
Robert Nemiroff
(MTU) &
Jerry Bonnell
(USRA)
NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings,
and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris.
Specific
rights apply.
A service of:
LHEA at
NASA /
GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
