Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
If you want to photograph a comet without requiring special astrophotography gear, then the next two weeks could be your best opportunity. You certainly won’t get another opportunity to see this particular comet again, as the next time will be in 50,000 years. I don’t know about you, but I’m not planning to be around then!
According to NASA, the Comet C/2022 E3, as it’s been so catchily titled, will be at its closest point to earth on February 2, 2023.
Discovered in March 2022, comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) is approaching the Earth. In only a few weeks, it will come the closest to our planet before vanishing again for tens of thousands of years. Astrophotographers and space enthusiasts, you know what this means: get your telescopes and cameras ready! In fact, the comet and its green tail could even be visible to the naked eye.
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has just broken yet another record. After the most distant star ever seen, it’s now spotted and captured the largest icy comment astronomers have ever seen. And it truly is massive!
The estimated diameter is approximately 80 miles across. For reference, that’s larger than the state of Rhode Island, and around 26 times larger than the Comet Neowise. As for its nucleus, it’s about 50 times larger than found at the heart of most known comets. Its mass is also enormous: NASA estimates that it weighs 500 trillion tons, which a hundred thousand times greater than the mass of a typical comet found much closer to the Sun.
Comet Leonard has been a real treat for astrophotographers this month. And one of them, Andrew McCarthy, took a magnificent photo of it. I saw it while scrolling through Facebook and it stopped me in my tracks. So, I reached out to Andrew wanting to know more, and he kindly shared the photo and some details with DIYP. [Read More…]
Over July and August, comet NEOWISE became the “Holy Grail” of many photographers out there. I also had my own attempts to capture it before it goes away for another 6,800 years. It was uncertain whether or not the comet will survive its Sun flyby and return for our descendant to observe. But according to a recent image made with Hubble telescope, NEOWISE has survived and will be here for our children’s children’s children’s… children to observe.
Astrophotographers have the opportunity to spot a rare object in the sky this month. A newly discovered comet, NEOWISE, is flying through the inner solar system for the first time in 6,800 years. (6,800 FRIGGIN YEARS!!!). This comet has been getting brighter and brighter in the early-morning sky and, in the coming days, it will make an appearance in the evening after sunset. It is now brighter than Halley’s Comet appeared when it whizzed through the inner solar system in 1986.
In 2014, Rosetta spacecraft became the first spacecraft to orbit a comet and bring us stunning images of its surface. In 2016, it made its final maneuver when it hard-landed the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The Rosetta’s comet mission gave us over 400,000 images, and motion designer Christian Stangl and composer Wolfgang Stangl joined forces to turn them into this breathtaking video.
The European Space Agency (ESA) plans to take photos of a comet that is just starting its journey into the inner Solar System. In the upcoming mission, three spacecraft will photograph the comet from different perspectives, and hopefully, help ESA to spot material from the very dawn of our Solar System.
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