Christmas Comet Lovejoy Captured at Paranal (image)

ESO

Caption

ESO optician Guillaume Blanchard captured this marvellous wide-angle photo of Comet Lovejoy just two days ago on Dec. 22, 2011. Comet Lovejoy has been the talk of the astronomy community over the past few weeks. It was first discovered on Nov. 27 by the Australian amateur astronomer Terry Lovejoy and was classified as a Kreutz sungrazer, with its orbit taking it very close to the Sun, passing a mere 140,000 kilometres from the Sun's surface.

Credit

G. Blanchard(eso.org/~gblancha)/ESO

Usage Restrictions

None

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.