Friday, April 9, 2010

Astrophoto Friday: Comet Arend Roland

Comet Arend-Roland photographed April 26, 1957 with the 48-inch Palomar Schmidt telescope (now called the Samuel Oschin Telescope).


For part of its passage around the Sun this comet offered up a spectacular anti-tail - a spike of dust sometimes seen as a comet passes through the orbital plain of the Earth.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

That was my very first comet!

Ringo said...

My favorite comet. The unicorn like horn as seen from our Earth-bound perspective is actually a broad fan seen on edge. Too bad Comet Arend-Roland will probably never return.