Eideard

Click on Guillaume Blanchard’s photo to enlarge

The recently discovered Comet Lovejoy has been captured in stunning photos and time-lapse video taken from ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. The comet graced the southern sky after it had unexpectedly survived a close encounter with the Sun…

ESO optician Guillaume Blanchard made a marvellous wide-angle photo of Comet Lovejoy…Blanchard said: “For me this comet is a Christmas present to the people who will stay at Paranal over Christmas”.

This bright comet was also seen from the International Space Station in another stunning time-lapse sequence on 21 December as the crew filmed lightning on the Earth’s night side.

Comet Lovejoy has been the talk of the astronomy community over the past few weeks. It was discovered on 27 November by the Australian amateur astronomer Terry Lovejoy and was classified as a Kreutz sungrazer, with its orbit taking it very close to the Sun. Just last week, the comet entered the Sun’s corona, a much-anticipated event, passing a mere 140 000 kilometres from the Sun’s surface. A close shave indeed…

The comet was expected to break up and vaporise, but instead it survived its steaming hot encounter with the Sun and re-emerged a few days later, much to everyone’s surprise. It is now visible from the southern hemisphere, appearing at dawn, and features a bright tail millions of kilometres long, composed of dust particles that are being blown ahead of the comet by the solar wind.

Some of the earliest recorded space phenomenon are comets. Ignorant primitives regard[ed] them as omens, demons, messengers from some invisible dude in the sky.

I’m pretty well satisfied simply appreciating their beauty, their history, their passage from birth to death.

 
NASA astronaut Dan Burbank shared a matchless view of Comet Lovejoy from the International Space Station, showing the comet’s magnificent tail from a vantage point high above the atmosphere.

“I probably saw the most amazing thing I have ever seen in space, and that’s saying an awful lot, because every day is filled with amazing things,” he told Detroit’s WDIV-TV in an interview.

Hundreds of photos, captured from an altitude of 240 miles, were assembled into the video you see here. You can see the comet rise from the horizon, shining through the green line of atmospheric airglow, and then fade away as the sunrise breaks out in brilliance. It’s a view only three people can see with their own eyes — although that little list will rise to six on Friday when three more crewmates arrive on a Russian Soyuz craft.

Breathtaking. I’m happy I’m alive in a time where at least I can watch something like this secondhand.