Astronomers from the Institute of Physics in Opava received an important award. On Saturday, NASA published their photo of comet 12P/Pons-Brooks with the Andromeda galaxy as the prestigious Astronomical Picture of the Day. You can watch the so-called devil’s comet over the Czech Republic for about a month with small binoculars or even with your eyes.

​”On Saturday, March 9, 2024, the American agency NASA published as the prestigious Astronomical Picture of the Day a photograph called ‘Comet Pons-Brooks in Northern Spring’, the author of which is Petr Horálek from the Institute of Physics in Opava, ” announced the institute on Saturday.

Horálek captured the comet with the Andromeda galaxy on March 5 near the Slovak town of Revúca. “The resulting picture was created only thanks to great luck,” remarked Horálek.

The comet that lit up the Czech sky is often called the devil’s comet, because of the so-called horns. “They occur because the comet’s large nucleus has an unusual ‘notch’ on its surface that blocks the flow of cryomagma into space and causes the coma to grow irregularly,” the website explained Live Science.

“Despite the promising forecast, I had to drive over 300 kilometers and then realized that I probably wouldn’t get any images of Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks on the evening of March 5, 2024. When I arrived in Telgárt, Slovakia, the sky was hopelessly overcast. I knew that I have roughly two hours to take several shots of the comet. I quickly decided to move south, towards the town of Revúca,” Horálek described the creation of the image.

But there was really thick fog on the road the whole way. When he finally reached Revúca, the sky cleared.

“But I didn’t know this location at all, so I had a hard time looking for a place with a view of the comet. Finally, when I was about to give up and turn back, a field road appeared in front of me on the right. So I drove onto it, opened the door and look , that I have a perfect view. I didn’t waste any more time, set up the montage and started shooting blindly. It wasn’t until I realized in the pictures that the composition was actually very nice, with a distant tree and fog lit by passing cars,” he added.

In the end, this award-winning image was created:

Award-winning photograph of Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks with the Andromeda Galaxy | Source: Provided by Petr Horálek / Institute of Physics in Opava

​According to astronomers, you can watch the comet in the dark sky outside of big cities with small telescopes. In the coming weeks, the comet will move to the constellation Aries, where it will be visible from March 27 to April 19.

“It will then ‘end’ its visibility in our sky in the light of twilight over the western horizon in the constellation Taurus, in which it will also disappear from our sight,” said Horálek. Its visibility will increase even more, so that experienced observers can find it as a faint spot with the naked eye. Learn more about comet observability in this article.

In photographs, the comet is much more prominent than with the naked eye. They are created in places without light pollution, the lenses are also much more sensitive than the human eye.

“You have to pay attention to how the images published on the Internet were taken. It is said that a full-frame camera, that is, one whose chip is the size of a film frame, together with a 50mm lens, comes closest to the perception of the human eye in terms of perspective and angle the size of the objects. My picture was created with a 70mm lens, which means that the entire scene is about 1.4x zoomed in compared to perception by the human eye,” Horálek pointed out facebook.

NASA’s Astronomical Image of the Day, which became Horálk’s on Saturday, is carefully selected every day by Professor Jerry Bonnel from Michigan Technological University and Professor Robert Nemiroff from the University of Maryland. Their selection is one of the most recognized worldwide.

We will enjoy watching the sky this year. Comet, eclipse and meteor showers await us (1/2024):

TN.cz

2024-03-09 15:45:00
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