In a happy accident , Comet Lovejoy just encounter to be in the field of perspective of the 570 - megapixel Dark Energy Camera , the world ’s most powerful digital camera . One penis of the observing squad said it was a “ electric shock ” to see Comet Lovejoy pop up on the video display in the control room .
“ It prompt us that before we can look out beyond our Galaxy to the far reaches of the Universe , we need to look out out for celestial physical object that are much close to home ! ” write the team on theDark Energy Detectives blog .
On December 27 , 2014 , while scanning the southern sky as part of the Dark Energy Survey , C2014 Q2 entered the tv camera ’s view . Each of the orthogonal figure above represents one of the 62 individual domain of the camera .
At the time this picture was taken , the comet was passing about 82 million km ( 51 million miles ) from Earth . That ’s a brusk distance for the Dark Energy Camera , which is sensitive to light up to 8 billion light twelvemonth away . The comet ’s center is a ball of shabu rough 5 klick ( 3 miles ) across , and the seeable head of the comet is a cloud of throttle and dust about 640,000 km ( 400,000 miles ) in diam .
TheDark Energy Survey ( DES)is designed to examine the origin of the speed up creation and help reveal the nature of dark muscularity by measuring the 14 - billion - twelvemonth history of cosmic expansion with high preciseness .
The camera just finished up the third , six - month - long season of observations , and the camera wo n’t be observing again until this evenfall .
you may download high resolution versions of this imagehere .
This photo byNancy Atkinsonoriginally appeared atUniverse Today . It has been republished with permission .
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