Posted on Jan 27, 2023
APOD: 2023 January 27 - Comet ZTF: Orbital Plane Crossing
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Good Red Friday morning, Rallypoint, and welcome to the January 27th edition of Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD): "Comet ZTF: Orbital Plane Crossing." As Comet ZTF heads towards its nearest approach to Earth on February 1st, this image was captured earlier this week from California. What we see to the left of the nucleus (the comet's head) is the 'anti-tail.'
Why is this? Because our/Earth's orbital plane is crossing that of Comet ZTF, we encounter a bit of an optical illusion. The anti-tail appears to point towards the Sun...in actuality, we are looking at the tail edge on, and so it appears to be emerging on both sides of the coma. I'll post another diagram I came across that helps better show what happens when we look at the dust tail of a comet edge on versus the more typical broadside view.
Here are the gear notes associated with today's APOD. Gotta love 11" telescopes.
Telescope: Celestron RASA 11"
Camera: ZWO ASI6200MC Pro
Mounts: 10Micron GM1000 HPS
Why is this? Because our/Earth's orbital plane is crossing that of Comet ZTF, we encounter a bit of an optical illusion. The anti-tail appears to point towards the Sun...in actuality, we are looking at the tail edge on, and so it appears to be emerging on both sides of the coma. I'll post another diagram I came across that helps better show what happens when we look at the dust tail of a comet edge on versus the more typical broadside view.
Here are the gear notes associated with today's APOD. Gotta love 11" telescopes.
Telescope: Celestron RASA 11"
Camera: ZWO ASI6200MC Pro
Mounts: 10Micron GM1000 HPS
APOD: 2023 January 27 - Comet ZTF: Orbital Plane Crossing
Posted from apod.nasa.gov
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Astronomy
Edited >1 y ago
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Here's the diagram I mentioned earlier. Sunlight pushes the smaller particles of a comet's dust tail into a vast, thin sheet or fan extending millions of miles into space well beyond the path traveled by the comet’s nucleus (right). Since we now see Comet ZTF “edge-on”, all that dust overlaps from our perspective to form a thick, bright line that appears to stick out of the comet’s head (left). It’s as if we’re seeing the ghost of ZTF from the recent past still lingering in space. If we could somehow see the whole works broadside, the comet would appear fainter, spread out and much more diffuse.
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