It never seems to fail ! the fact that when their is something cool going on in space ! It's Cloudy ! IT'S NEVER CLOUDY IN TEXAS !!!WTF!
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Tonight, skies permitting, a greenish, "two-tail" comet that likely contains ice and dust from the beginnings of the solar system will offer a celestial spectacle on its first — and only — fly-by of our Earth.
Comet Lulin will make its closest pass to Earth (about 38 million miles), reaching its peak brightness and fastest apparent speed at 10:43 p.m. ET. You should be able to see it all night, from dusk until dawn, in either hemisphere, with telescopes, binoculars or even the naked eye if you're far away from city lights. It will appear just below Saturn, in the constellation Leo. Here's a sky chart.
Lulin, a remnant of the creation of the galaxy 4.5 billion years ago, will look like a tiny fuzz ball with two tails, one trailing and one pointing toward the Sun. But the latter is an "anti-tail," a rare optical effect. One other oddity: Lulin is orbiting "backward" compared with the planets.
The comet's color comes from a type of carbon and cyanogen, a poisonous gas.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Hello, goodbye: Rare, little green comet streaking past Earth
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2 comments:
Rats - Number 1 Infidel. Clouds! It's been cloudy here in Colorado all day, too. I thought for sure I'd be able to see Lulin.
Boo-hiss.
Cloudy in my neck of the woods too :(
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