Fireworks cosmic lights: flying the comet against the background of distant stars and nebulae

Departing from us, but still visible in the night sky comet Iwamoto (C/2018 Y1) was captured on 27 February along with the stars and nebulae of the Northern constellation Auriga.

Green comet and its tail pale side by side on the telescopic the picture with a group of red emission nebulae (top left) and open star cluster M36(bottom right).

The red is light from hydrogen gas ionized by ultraviolet radiation from hot stars near the giant molecular cloud located at a distance of about 6000 light-years. Star cluster M36 is also far beyond our Solar system a distance of about 4000 light-years. The green glow of the comet, flying less than 5 light minutes from the Earth is mainly radiation of molecules of diatomic carbon fluorescing in the sun.

Comet Iwamoto February 12, was held as close to the Ground and since then, removed from us at highly elliptical orbit that takes it beyond the Kuiper belt. The estimated period of its revolution is 1317 years, and now she returns to the Solar system only 3390 year.

Translated by «Yandex.Translator»