Spectacular Photos: Astronaut Sees Dazzling Comet From Space Station

Spectacular Photos: Astronaut Sees Dazzling Comet From Space Station

An wanderer vital in space has prisoner an rare perspective of a comet from circuit in a jaw-dropping set of photos taken over a night Earth.

The extraordinary images uncover , that survived a outing by a sun's atmosphere final week. They were snapped by maestro NASA wanderer Daniel Burbank, who is now commander of the International Space Station.

 

And even for a seasoned spaceflyer, a steer was extraordinary to behold.

It was "the many extraordinary thing I've ever seen in space," Burbank pronounced in a NASA video. "And that's observant an awful lot since each day is filled with extraordinary things."

Burbank took about 100 photographs of comet Lovejoy as it rose above Earth during night on Wednesday (Dec. 21). At a time, a space station was sailing 240 miles (386 kilometers) above Tasmania, Burbank said. Then a long, splendid tail of a comet began rising adult from a Earth's horizon.

"I had no suspicion what it was; it was a prolonged immature intense arc," Burbank pronounced in a video, that was available in an talk with WDIV-TV in Detroit. "It turns out that it finished adult being a comet." []

Burbank is in a center of a six-month goal to a International Space Station. He leads a three-man organisation (two Russian cosmonauts turn out a team) and is scheming to acquire 3 some-more astronauts on Friday (Dec. 23). A Russian Soyuz booster carrying a new crewmembers launched on Wednesday.

Comet Lovejoy was detected on Nov. 27 by Australian pledge astronomer Terry Lovejoy. The comet was estimated to be about 660 feet (200 meters) wide, incomparable than dual football fields, when it was initial seen.

The comet was fast identified as a supposed Kreutz comet, a comet on a trail that flies intensely tighten to a sun. Then, on Dec. 15, comet .

The comet zoomed within 87,000 miles (140,000 kilometers) of a sun's surface, and many astronomers likely it would not tarry such a tighten solar encounter. But comet Lovejoy defied a contingency and re-emerged on a other side of a sun. The eventuality dumbfounded astronomers and was prisoner by several sun-watching observatories in space.

The pitch nearby a object did slice purify off, though over a final week a comet has grown a new tail of gas blown behind by a solar wind.

"When it left behind a sun, we consider astronomers suspicion it would not seem again, it would substantially bake up," Burbank said. "But it's substantially a many fantastic thing that we can imagine."

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