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This month, skywatchers were treated to a special visitor as the “horned” comet 12P/Ponsbrooks streaked across the night sky.
Currently, this celestial wanderer is visible to anyone with good binoculars or a telescope, but by the end of March it could brighten to magnitude 5 and become visible to the naked eye.
12P/Ponds Brooks may also appear during the total solar eclipse on April 8th. It then disappears into the sunset through April, reaching perihelion (the closest point to the sun) on April 21st. It will begin to disappear and become visible to people in the southern hemisphere.
Here, take a look at some of the best photos of “horned” comets from around the world.
Related: Here’s how to see “horned” Comet 12P/Ponsbrooks in the night sky this month (video)
This beautiful image captured by landscape astrophotographer Josh Dury shows Comet 12P/Pons-Brookes soaring over Britain’s Mendip Hills AONB (An Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty), with the Andromeda Galaxy shining brightly above. I am.
“Photographing this comet was quite a challenge. It didn’t really visualize the amount of light pollution visible from my hometown of the Mendip Hills. Because of this, the final photo “We had to go through a series of compositions until we were satisfied with the composition,” Durie told Space.com. “Even with the longer integration times, we were able to see details in the comet’s core and ion tail, which were distorted by the solar wind,” Dury continued.
This isn’t Dury’s first time photographing a comet.
“I have been lucky enough to photograph many comets over the past few years. In 2020 I photographed Comet NEOWISE from Stonehenge, and in 2023 I photographed Comet E3 (ZTF). So, 12P /It was a real treat to see Comet Pons-Brooks!” Dury continued.
Dury is looking forward to the next opportunity for clear skies so he can photograph the comet as it brightens over the coming weeks.
Astrophotographer Osama Fati captured the comet Pons-Brooks 12P streaking across the sky above Egypt’s Black Desert, with Andromeda, our closest galactic neighbor, sitting on top of it.
Not only did Fatih capture the “horned” comet and Andromeda in the same image, he also captured what appeared to be a meteor streaking across a star-studded sky. Great job Fati!
Caitlin Moore captured this stunning image of Comet Pons-Brooks 12P over Lake Mendota, Wisconsin, USA.
“The comet was photographed with a 300mm zoom lens in the west-northwest sky over Lake Mendota in fairly severe light pollution,” Moore told Space.com.
The Rome-based Virtual Telescope Project, led by Gianluca Masi, photographed comet 12P/Pons-Brooks (lower right) and the Andromeda galaxy on March 5 using a combination of five 120-second exposures.
Amateur astrophotographer Kevin O’Donnell captured this beautiful close-up image of 12P/Ponds Brooks on March 6th outside of Wickenburg, Arizona.
“I drove west on the Carefree Highway from Phoenix to the dark skies outside of Wickenburg, Arizona. There, low in the sky, the galaxy now triangulating with Andromeda (M31) You can see comet 12P/Pons-Brooks (M33) in between,” O’Donnell told Space.com.
“The comet continues to get brighter, but it’s also visible closer to the horizon, making it harder to see because the moon is getting brighter. At the time, the comet was a magnitude 6.5 object, but it’s still quite dim even in a dark sky with binoculars. ” O’Donnell continued.
O’Donnell also created a video showing how he managed to capture the images despite the tricky clouds. This video can be viewed on his Instagram page @theskydetective.
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