Comet ISON
In this Hubble Space Telescope composite image taken in
April 2013, the sun-approaching Comet ISON floats against a
seemingly infinite backdrop of numerous galaxies and a
handful of foreground stars. The icy visitor, with its long
gossamer tail, appears to be swimming like a tadpole
through a deep pond of celestial wonders.
In reality, the comet is much, much closer. The nearest star to the
Sun is over 60,000 times farther away, and the nearest large galaxy to
the Milky Way is over thirty billion times more distant. These vast
dimensions are lost in this deep space Hubble exposure that visually
combines our view of the universe from the very nearby to the
extraordinarily far away.
This photo is one of the original images featured on
ISONblog, a new online source offering unique analysis of
Comet ISON by Hubble Space Telescope astronomers and staff
at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md.
For more on ISONblog, visit:
http://hubblesite.org/go/ison.
