Photographer from the Institute of Physics succeeds in NASA APOD yet again

  • Tomáš Lanča
  • 02.08.2021
On Saturday the 31st of July, the American NASA institute published the photo “Remembering NEOWISE” by Petr Horálek from the Institute of Physics as a prestigious astronomy photo of the day. The photo recalls the flyby of the comet C/2020 F3 NEOWISE. The comet was shining bright in the morning and later in the evening sky during July of last year and was the brightest comet on the northern hemisphere’s night sky of the last 23 years. Thanks to the flyby happening “inside” of the Big Dipper constellation and the pandemic of COVID-19 that caused people to pay more attention to nature and space, the comet ended up being one of the most photographed space bodies ever.
The night sky is still accessible to all despite the exceptional pandemic restrictions. On it you can currently observe the Milky Way, the first meteors from the Perseid meteor shower are starting to show themselves and low above the horizon at dusk, you can see bright planets: Venus above the western horizon and Jupiter and Saturn above south-east horizon. However, many still recall the most impressive event on the night sky of last year, the comet C/2020 F3 NEOWISE. And this particular comet is the subject of the Astronomy Picture Of the Day from the 31st of July 2021 which was made by Petr Horálek last year.

The photo was made on the 23rd of July 2020 near the northernmost point of Czech Republic during an outdoors seminar about space. During the talk, the author was showing the comet to the participants with a telescope, next to which he had a camera with fast lenses on a small mobile platform. The camera made a total of nineteen 30-second long exposures which were then combined into one picture to surpress unwanted noise and finely tuned in other sophisticated ways to bring out the structure and detail of the tails of the comet. During the exposures, clouds were passing over the Big Dipper and thanks to the lights from the cities in distance, they show up on the picture as parralel stripes which give the composition of the picture a breath of dramatic atmosphere. It’s the third picture from the Institute of Physics that made it to NASA APOD and the 29th entry by Petr Horálek. At the same time it is also the 17th photo that was created in Czech Republic and the third photo of the comet NEOWISE from a czech photographer (first was published on the 11th of July 2020 by Miroslav Druckmüller and the second was published on the 16th of July 2020 also by Petr Horálek)

The comet C/2020 NEOWISE F3 in the Big Dipper is captured on the picure on the day it was closest to earth. On that day, the 23rd of July at 3:09 CEST the comet was 0.63 astronomical units (about 103.5 million kilometres) away from earth and was the largest on the sky. It had two prominents tails, one which was white, consisting of dust and the other one - blue, which consists of ions. The white tail is bent thanks to the gravitational  pull of our Sun, while the blue one is always pointed directly away from the Sun. While it is usually only barely visible by the naked eye, on the picture it is visible at the length equal to 60 full moons next to each other. During the time when it was best observable, the comet was visible over the constellation of „Big Dipper“ (which is a part of the Ursa Major constellation) which made this flyby incredibly photogenic. It was one of the most visible comets since the year 1998 when the Hale-Bopp comet was visible on the night sky. The NEOWISE comet will be visible again in 6 765 years.


Astonomy Picture of the Day 31st of July 2021 named "Remembering NEOWISE" Photo: Petr Horálek (Institute of Physics in Opava) Astonomy Picture of the Day 31st of July 2021 named "Remembering NEOWISE" Photo: Petr Horálek (Institute of Physics in Opava)

Astronomy photo of the Day NASA (APOD) is a prestigious award of the most interesting astronomy photo of the day which is selected and competed by an educational description by a team of editors: prof. Jerry Bonnell (from the Michigan Technological University and prof. Robert Nemiroff (University of Maryland) who both work with NASA. The motto of APOD is „Discover the Cosmos“ and since 1995 when the collection was started it became one of the most respected of its type in the world. The original texts are translated into 23 languages including Czech (translations into which have been done since 1999 by Josef Chlachula) APOD is seen by hundreds of millions of followers on social media every day.