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APOD
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
Close Comet and Large Magellanic Cloud
Explanation: Sporting a surprisingly bright , lovely green coma Comet 252P/Linear poses next to the Large Magellanic Cloud in this southern skyscape. The stack of telephoto exposures was captured on March 16 from Penwortham, South Australia. Recognized as a Jupiter family periodic comet , 252P/Linear will come close to our fair planet on March 21, passing a mere 5.3 million kilometers away. That's about 14 times the Earth-Moon distance. In fact, it is one of two comets that will make remarkably close approaches in the next few days as a much fainter Comet Pan-STARRS (P/2016 BA14) comes within 3.5 million kilometers (9 times the Earth-Moon distance) on March 22. The two have extremely similar orbits , suggesting they may have originally been part of the same comet. Sweeping quickly across the sky because of their proximity to Earth, both comets will soon move into northern skies.
| Date | March 17, 2016 |
|---|---|
| Credit |
Image Credit & Copyright: Justin Tilbrook ( Astronomical Society of South Australia ) |
| Authors & editors: | Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP) |
| A service of: |
ASD at NASA / GSFC, NASA Science Activation & Michigan Tech. U. |