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Credit & Copyright: Rolando Ligustri
(CARA Project,
CAST)
Explanation:
On October 19th, a good place to watch
Comet Siding Spring
will be from Mars.
Then, this inbound
visitor (C/2013 A1) to the
inner solar system, discovered in January 2013 by
Robert McNaught at Australia's Siding Spring Observatory,
will pass within 132,000 kilometers of the Red Planet.
That's a near miss,
equivalent to just over 1/3 the Earth-Moon distance.
Great views of the comet for denizens of planet Earth's
southern hemisphere are possible now, though.
This telescopic snapshot
from August 29 captured the comet's
whitish coma and arcing dust tail sweeping through southern skies.
The fabulous
field of view includes,
the Small Magellanic Cloud
and globular star clusters 47 Tucanae (right) and NGC 362 (upper left).
Worried about all those spacecraft in Martian orbit?
Streaking dust particles from the comet could pose a danger and
controllers
plan to position Mars orbiters on the opposite side of the
planet during the comet's close flyby.
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NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings, and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris. Specific rights apply.
A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
Based on Astronomy Picture
Of the Day
Publications with keywords: SMC
Publications with words: SMC
See also: