February 6, 2009

Tale of a comet (Lulin) in photos

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Here in New York City, where Scientific American is based, we don't often get to enjoy the pleasures of stargazing. The moon is a reliable sight, as are many of the closer stars, but relatively faint objects like Comet Lulin, making what's believed to be its maiden voyage past Earth, are usually drowned out by light pollution. In more astronomy-friendly (read: darker) corners of the globe, however, Lulin is already being spotted, more than two weeks before it ventures closest to our planet on February 24.

Amateur and professional astronomers alike have managed to catch the comet on camera—a collection of their links appears below. If you capture a good image of Lulin yourself, let us know by commenting on this blog post with a link, or get in touch via Twitter at http://twitter.com/sciam. We'll update this post as the links come in. Happy hunting!

Photo of Lulin by xn44 on Flickr

—A photo and a history of the comet's discovery from NASA

—Sky & Telescope has shots from Austrian astrophotog Michael Jaeger, as well as charts to help you find Lulin in the sky

—A growing gallery of images from SpaceWeather.com

—An extensive collection of Lulin shots from amateur astronomer Gregg Ruppel

—The comet was NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day on Monday

—Follow Lulin's approach on Twitter

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