14 DAY TRIAL // Towards the end of last year, on December 27, the Dark Energy Camera, which happens to be the most powerful digital camera in the world, was just minding its own business peering into the southern sky when Comet Lovejoy entered its view.
At the time when this happened, the celestial body found itself at a distance of about 51 million miles (82 million kilometers) from our planet. Still, the Dark Energy Camera managed to have a good look at it and image it in detail.
This is because this digital camera is sensitive to light originating from up to 8 billion light years from it. Otherwise put, the distance that stood between it and Comet Lovejoy on December 27 did not in the least hinder the camera's performance.
The view of Comet Lovejoy that the Dark Energy Camera obtained late last year was shared with the public just yesterday, February 27, and is available next to this article.
“While scanning the southern sky as part of the Dark Energy Survey, researchers snapped the above shot of Comet Lovejoy. Each of the rectangular shapes above represents one of the 62 individual fields of the camera,” astronomers explain.
Based on data at hand, scientists estimate that the ball of ice that forms this comet's center has a diameter of about 3 miles (5 kilometers). The cloud of gas and dust that surrounds this core, on the other hand, measures about 400,000 miles (640,000 kilometers) across.