Close Encounter with M44 लेबलों वाले संदेश दिखाए जा रहे हैं. सभी संदेश दिखाएं
Close Encounter with M44 लेबलों वाले संदेश दिखाए जा रहे हैं. सभी संदेश दिखाएं

शुक्रवार, 30 जनवरी 2015

APOD - Close Encounter with M44

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
2015 January 29
See Explanation.  Clicking on the picture will download   the highest resolution version available.
Close Encounter with M44
Image Credit & Copyright: Carlo Dellarole, Andrea Demarchi
Explanation: On Monday, January 26, well-tracked asteroid 2004 BL86 made its closest approach, a mere 1.2 million kilometers from our fair planet. That's about 3.1 times the Earth-Moon distance or 4 light-seconds away. Moving quickly through Earth's night sky, it left this streak in a 40 minute long exposure on January 27 made from Piemonte, Italy. The remarkably pretty field of view includes M44, also known as the Beehive or Praesepe star cluster in Cancer. Of course, its close encounter with M44 is only an apparent one, with the cluster nearly along the same line-of-sight to the near-earth asteroid. The actual distance between star cluster and asteroid is around 600 light-years. Still, the close approach to planet Earth allowed detailed radar imaging from NASA's Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, California and revealed the asteroid to have its own moon.

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