Another Italian astronomical photo of the day selected by NASA is once again making waves: it shows the comet ‘horny’ 12P/Pons-Brooks with its long dust tail that appears to point towards the Sun due to an optical illusion. The image was captured on May 26th in Namibia and is the work of two Italian expert astrophotographers, Lukas Demetz and Rolando Ligustri. The latter, a comet photographer from Friuli of the Italian Astrofil Union (Uai), has now achieved his twentieth recognition as ‘Astronomy Picture of the Day’ (Apod), a true milestone in the Italian astrophotography community.
The NASA-selected image shows comet 12P with two tails pointing in opposite directions. The most spectacular is the bright blue ion tail, pushed by solar wind. From the comet’s coma, visible at the top right, the dust tail fans out: pushed out and slowed down by solar pressure, it tends to spread along the orbit and, from certain angles, may appear opposite to the ion tail.
In essence, the anti-tail is an optical illusion, resulting from the fact that this week Earth is passing through the orbital plane of comet 12P. During this passage, the sharp-edged fan-shaped dust tail appears to point towards the Sun.
At the bottom of the image, Ligustri explains on the Uai website, the distant and bright star Alpha Leporis is visible. On June 2nd, the comet made its closest approach to Earth and is now visible from southern skies, while it dims and moves away towards the outer Solar System.
Copyright © ANSA
