APOD: The Meteor and the Comet (2024 Nov 27)

[APOD Robot]

The Meteor and the Comet

Explanation: How different are these two streaks? The streak on the upper right is Comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas showing an impressive dust tail. The comet is a large and dirty iceberg that entered the inner Solar System and is shedding gas and dust as it is warmed by the Sun's light. The streak on the lower left is a meteor showing an impressive evaporation trail. The meteor is a small and cold rock that entered the Earth's atmosphere and is shedding gas and dust as it is warmed by molecular collisions. The meteor was likely once part of a comet or asteroid -- perhaps later composing part of its tail. The meteor was gone in a flash and was only caught by coincidence during a series of exposures documenting the comet's long tail. The featured image was captured just over a month ago from Sichuan Province in China.

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[Prof. Parker]

I saw this image a while back on Facebook and even then it made me feel uneasy. There are too many things that to me make this image look contrived.

1) If you were set up to image the comet wouldn't you make it the subject matter by putting it along the main diagonal?
2) Isn't the framing of the comet and the meteor (by putting BOTH off the main diagonal) just a little too perfect?
3) Have you ever seen a meteor streak that is pencil thin for its whole length as in this image?
4) Isn't it rather extraordinary that the meteor is running precisely parallel to the comet? I would have been a little less suspicious if it had say run horizontally across the middle of the frame cutting the comet in half.

Any other imagers having similar concerns?

[ddski]

This comet that is "... a large and dirty iceberg, shedding..." will it burn out? If it is shedding this orbit, what about next orbit?

[florid_snow]

Wow what a nice capture. Yes, it seems pretty lucky, but you'd be surprised how many fun coincidences happen when imaging. A full-frame camera field is a huge area, especially compared to this comet getting smaller, the comet probably was centered in the frame and the image has just been cropped, you can zoom in and look at the coma and distortion of the bright star in the top left corner of the image, it's probably edge of the capture.

The photographer's goal could easily have been to see the extended tail, using a lens "zoomed out" enough to capture faint details far away from the comet center, had the camera on a tracker automatically taking exposures one after the other, you can easily end up with hundreds of images over many hours, just one was this lucky one. Some people can miss this too, if they don't look at all their exposures and just cram them all in some auto-stacking software, it will remove meteor streaks just like satellite streaks.

During the transit of Venus, I got one of those perfect sharp silhouette shots of a plane flying in front of the sun right next to Venus, completely unplanned, just an accident, I couldn't believe it. Over the next few days many other people posted similar ones online, I don't think they were fake, it's just population centers near airports, just the odds adding up. Same thing with meteors and cameras running all night.

[johnnydeep]

This comet that is "... a large and dirty iceberg, shedding..." will it burn out? If it is shedding this orbit, what about next orbit?

All comets that we see as they get close to the Sun and are warmed, shed their gas and dust which is why we see their tails. Eventually, if such a comet makes enough passes into the inner solar system it will have shed all it can shed and will then become "dead".