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Image Of The Day
An Artificial Comet
📖 3 min read 📊 beginner 🏷️ NASA APOD
In Brief
Yes, but can your comet tail do this? No, and what you are seeing is not the tail of a comet. The picture features a cleverly overlayed time-lapse sequence of a group of satellites orbiting Earth together in June. Specifically, these are Starlink communications satellites in low Earth orbit reflecti...
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The Full Story
Yes, but can your comet tail do this? No, and what you are seeing is not the tail of a comet. The picture features a cleverly overlayed time-lapse sequence of a group of satellites orbiting Earth together in June. Specifically, these are Starlink communications satellites in low Earth orbit reflecting back sunlight before sunrise to Inner Mongolia, China. Although the satellites appear to the human eye as points, the 20-second-long camera exposures caused them to appear as short streaks. Current...
Key Takeaways
- 1 Important astronomical discovery
- 2 Advances our understanding
- 3 Future research potential
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How We Know This
Scientific observation and analysis
What This Means
Contributes to our knowledge of the universe
Why It Matters
Important advance in astronomy
Related Topics
#astronomy
#discovery