Write a commentAlthough Comet Pan-STARRS turned out not to be a naked-eye comet as originally predicted, Scott Roby, associate professor of astronomy at SUNY Oswego, did capture it with a camera Sunday, March 17, an hour after sunset.
According to Roby, the comet will remain in our evening skies, drifting northward, through April, though it is getting fainter week by week. He took the above photo with a standard SLR digital camera on a tripod, using ISO 800, open aperture, and a 30-second exposure.
A comet is normally named after the person who discovered it, but Pan-STARRS is named after an automated sky survey (robotic telescopes and software) put in place by a large team of astronomers. This survey is helping to discover more near-Earth asteroids like the one that passed by our highest satellites last month.
Comets are "dirty icebergs" in space left over from the birth of our solar system. Comet Pan-Starrs seems to be a first-time visitor to the inner solar system, having travelled for millions of years from the distant Oort's Cloud of comets (which stretches nearly half-way to the nearest stars).
