Comet C/2023 A3, Aurora, Orbital Sunrise & Airglow | International Space Station
Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) was about 44 million miles away from Earth in this photograph from the International Space Station as it orbited 272 miles above the South Pacific Ocean southeast of New Zealand just before sunrise.
Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) was about 44 million miles away from Earth in this photograph from the International Space Station as it orbited 272 miles above the South Pacific Ocean southeast of New Zealand just before sunrise.
Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) was about 44 million miles away from Earth in this photograph from the International Space Station as it orbited 272 miles above the South Pacific Ocean west of the Patagonia region of South America just before sunrise.
Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) was about 44 million miles away from Earth in this photograph from the International Space Station as it orbited into a sunrise 272 miles above the Indian Ocean south of Australia's island state of Tasmania. The aurora australis seemingly fades into the atmospheric glow above Earth's horizon.
The aurora australis blends with Earth's atmospheric glow blanketing the nighttime horizon with New Zealand's city lights below in this photograph from the International Space Station as it orbited 270 miles above the Tasman Sea.
The aurora australis blends with Earth's atmospheric glow blanketing the nighttime horizon in this photograph from the International Space Station as it orbited 271 miles above the Pacific Ocean off the coast of New Zealand.
As the International Space Station soared 266 miles over Western Australia, NASA astronaut Jeanette Epps captured this long-exposure shot of Earth at night and star trails glittering above airglow in the Earth's the atmosphere.
The first rays of an orbital sunrise breakthrough illuminating Earth's atmosphere in this photograph from the International Space Station as it orbited 272 miles above the South Pacifc Ocean off the southern coast of New Zealand. In the foreground, at right, is the Canadarm2 robotic arm and partially obscured at top, is the SpaceX Dragon Freedom spacecract docked to the Harmony module's forward port.
C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS) is a comet from the solar system's Oort cloud discovered by the Purple Mountain Observatory east of Nanjing, China, on January 9, 2023, and independently found by the automated Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) in South Africa on February 22, 2023. ATLAS is funded by NASA's planetary defense office, and developed and operated by the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy. C/2023 A3 will pass perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) at a distance of 0.39 AU (58 million km; 36 million miles) on September 27, 2024. This is when it can be best viewed with the naked eye from the ground on Earth.
The Oort cloud is theorized to be a vast cloud of icy planetesimals surrounding the Sun at distances ranging from 2,000 to 200,000 AU (0.03 to 3.2 light-years). The concept of such a cloud was proposed in 1950 by the Dutch astronomer Jan Oort, in whose honor the idea was named. Oort proposed that the bodies in this cloud replenish and keep constant the number of long-period comets entering the inner Solar System—where they are eventually consumed and destroyed during close approaches to the Sun.
Airglow occurs when atoms and molecules in the upper atmosphere, excited by sunlight, emit light to shed their excess energy. Or, it can happen when atoms and molecules that have been ionized by sunlight collide with and capture a free electron. In both cases, they eject a particle of light—called a photon—in order to relax again. The phenomenon is similar to auroras, but where auroras are driven by high-energy particles originating from the solar wind, airglow is energized by ordinary, day-to-day solar radiation.
Expedition 72 Updates:
https://blogs.nasa.gov/spacestation/
Expedition 72 Crew
Station Commander: Suni Williams
Roscosmos (Russia): Alexander Grebenkin, Alexey Ovchinin, Ivan Vagner, Aleksandr Gorbunov
NASA: Matthew Dominick, Mike Barrett, Jeanette Epps, Butch Wilmore, Don Pettit, Nick Hague
Image Credit: NASA's Johnson Space Center
Image Dates: Sept. 27-Oct. 1, 2024
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