Thursday 23 October 2014

Close Encounters: Comet Siding Spring Seen Next to Mars



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This is a photo composite of the encounter of Comet Siding Spring with Mars on October 19, 2014. Separate Hubble Space Telescope images of Mars and the comet have been combined together into a single picture. This is a composite image because a single exposure of the stellar background, Comet Siding Spring, and Mars would be problematic because the objects are all moving with respect to each other and the background stars. Hubble can only track one planetary target at a time. Also, Mars is actually 10,000 times brighter than the comet, and the exposure here has been adjusted so that details on the Red Planet can be seen.




via HubbleSite NewsCenter -- Latest News Releases

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2014/45/

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