5 Hours of Beautiful Comet Lovejoy in 30 Seconds

by Nancy Atkinson on December 29, 2011

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Comet Lovejoy (C/2011 W3) Esperance WA (27-12-2012) from Colin Legg on Vimeo.

Colin Legg from Esperance, Australia has been documenting Comet Lovejoy’s holiday gift to the southern hemisphere, and this is his latest — and possibly last — timelapse, as the comet has started to fade. This one covers almost 5 hours of Legg’s Comet Lovejoy views as seen during the early morning hours of December 27, 2011. “I used a tracking device to track in azimuth only to maximize coverage,” Legg said. “If you look closely at the head in the 2nd half you can see it moving against the stars.”

About

Nancy Atkinson is Universe Today's Senior Editor. She also is the host of the NASA Lunar Science Institute podcast and works with the Astronomy Cast and 365 Days of Astronomy podcasts. Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador.

  • Erik Wessel

    Cool, I visited Esperance once, they have wreckage of the Skylab space station there.

  • Anonymous

    Nice. I wonder what the flashes just over the horizon are between 0.06 and 0.09.

    • Anonymous

      Cars?

  • Anonymous

    For the first time, this video has given me a sense of wonder and awe over this Cometary visitation: Seeing it rise, like some dramatic moment on stage of Wagnerian opera play, with its long(!) ghostly tail paralleling the band of the Galaxy.

    Thanks, mate (as they say down under), for sharing your Summer night’s glory with the North.

  • Anonymous

    Takes a patient eye to see a comet move.. OR else it takes something really close, like C. Hyakutaki? Hai! Back ground stars are key here. Usually over the course of a couple hours one sees some detectable movement in any given comet. But it’s rare to actually see a comet move? Of the 45 comets I’ve seen.. only 3 moved fast enough thru my field of view to actually appear moving…

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