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Friday, July 17, 2020

The Two Tails of Comet Neowise are Featured at NASA via APOD's Astronomy Picture of the Day Photographed by Petr Horalek

Our comment to photograph and material below from APOD and NASA: The two tails of Comet Neowise, visible to the naked eye, may have been seen similarly by megalithic builders in the previous 5th millennium passage of Neowise near Planet Earth. Those ancient stargazers could have depicted the two tails by a figure that modern researchers have guessed to be the rather improbably gigantic spout of a whale at the focus of the megalithic site of
Mané Lud, Locmariaquer, Morbihan bei Carnac, Brittany, France.
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The image below via NASA is linked from the APOD website,
which presents the The Long Tails of Comet NEOWISE
Image Credit & Copyright: Petr Horalek:
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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.

2020 July 16
See Explanation.  Clicking on the picture will download
the highest resolution version available.

The Long Tails of Comet NEOWISE
Image Credit & Copyright: Petr Horalek
Explanation: This Comet NEOWISE (C/2020 F3) now sweeps through our fair planet's northern skies. Its long tails stretch across this deep skyview from Suchy Vrch, Czech Republic. Recorded on the night of July 13/14, the composite of untracked foreground and tracked and filtered sky exposures teases out details in the comet's tail not visible to the unaided eye. Faint structures extend to the top of the frame, over 20 degrees from the comet's bright coma. Pushed out by the pressure of sunlight itself, the broad curve of the comet's yellowish dust tail is easy to see by eye. But the fainter, more bluish tail is separate from the reflective comet dust. The fainter tail is an ion tail, formed as ions from the cometary coma are dragged outward by magnetic fields in the solar wind and fluoresce in the sunlight. Outbound NEOWISE is climbing higher in northern evening skies, coming closest to Earth on July 23rd.

Notable Images of Comet NEOWISE Submitted to APOD: || July 15 || July 14 || July 13 || July 12 || July 11 || July 10 & earlier ||
Tomorrow's picture: tales in space

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