The Comita Leonard passed across the land this weekend and Mexico It witnessed one of the most anticipated astronomical events of the year and can be seen without the need for a telescope.

A Mexican photographer uploaded photos of the upcoming event to their networks and shared them on the Stars Night Page, which nominated her as the photo of the week.

Noche de estrellas said Daniel (photographer) was taken from Zacatecas Comita LeonardOn the night of December 2 and 3, on its way through the constellation Canes Venatici towards
boats
.

During those nights the comet visually coincided with M 3, a globular cluster first observed in 1764 by comet explorer Charles Messier.

At the beginning of the year, scientists discovered a comet that was on its way to the Sun, Leonard, which is cataloged as C/2021 A1 and named after Gregory J. Leonard.

This discovery was seen at the Mount Lemon Observatory, also known as the Mount Lemon Infrared Observatory, in Arizona, United States.

At that time, it was an extremely faint object of magnitude 19, which was approximately 160,000 times fainter than the faintest star that could be seen with the naked eye.

Leonard was about five astronomical units from the Sun, which is the equivalent of one astronomical unit, or AU, which is equal to the average distance from the Earth to the Sun 149,565 million
kilometers
.

NSComet Leonard He was close to the orbit of Jupiter, far from the sun, but he began to feel the effects of the warm rays of the sun and slowly began the process of opening into a visible celestial body.

It was decided that it would be something easy to see with a small telescope or a pair of binoculars and with the naked eye in the second half of December, as Comita Leonard It will approach the sun.

Comets are mainly made of frozen gases that heat up as they approach the Sun and glow in their light. As the gases heat up and expand, the solar wind blows the expanding material toward the comet’s tail.

News by all means. Download a file
Application
!

I