Comet Lovejoy on a Coronograph (IMAGE)

NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

Comet Lovejoy on a Coronograph

Caption

This is an image of Comet Lovejoy as it moves ever closer toward the sun taken on December 15, 2011 at 4:30 AM ET. This image is what's known as a "coronograph" in which the camera -- the Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph C3 instrument on the Solar Heliospheric Observatory -- obscures the sun itself so as to be able to observe its fainter atmosphere, the corona.

Credit

Credit: ESA/NASA/SOHO

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