 Greetings and welcome to the Astronomy Picture of the Day podcast. Today's picture for March 18th of 2024 is titled Comet Ponds Brooks' Swirling Coma. So what do we see here? Well, here we see the comet known as Ponds Brooks, and it's looked in great detail here and specifically colored to highlight various parts of the comet. We can see the tail in the blue stretching back. This is what is known as the ion tail of the comet, which is individual atoms and ions pushed back by the energy of the sun. So they will always be directly behind the comet and making the comet then point toward the sun in the sky. So where is the sun? Well, the sun is somewhere well down to the lower left hand side here. Obviously not up above the horizon as we can see plenty of stars visible. Now in the green, we see the coma. That is the area around the comet and is material that has been vaporized off the comet and then is pushed back around forms kind of a halo around it and then some of that is pushed back into the tail. But that's what makes the comet actually visible is having all of this material that has been expelled from the comet. Otherwise the comet is just a ball of ice and dust that would just be orbiting around. It's only a few kilometers in size in general and would never be visible to us were it not for the energizing nature of the sun. It would just be this chunk of ice. In fact there are many comets that stay well out in the depths of the solar system and would never be visible like this. Now as we look closer in we see that reddish gas around the coma which is actually in a spiral pattern. Now what might cause this? Well it could be the nucleus of the comet rotating that could cause material to come off in this kind of spiral pattern. Now this is not known for sure but that's a current explanation that would explain the type of pattern that we see here. So Comet Ponds Brooks is currently visible in binoculars or small telescope to observers and is actually relatively close to the sun only about 25 degrees away from the sun. What does 25 degrees mean? Well if you hold your fist at arm's length that's about 10 degrees so it's not very far making it difficult to see because it's going to be visible only when the sun is up or just below the horizon. Those are the only times you'll be able to see it not seeing it in the middle of the night in a dark sky. However we do have an event coming up in just a few weeks now which is the total solar eclipse which will block out the light from the sun for a period of time for parts of North America and therefore could make it more visible. Now currently it's at the very edge of naked eye visibility and we don't know what it will be like in a couple of weeks so it's still possible that it could brighten enough to actually be visible during that eclipse but that would only be if you were on the path of totality and that means you need to be in that small band where the moon will pass directly in front of the sun blocking out its light completely. In that case then Comet Ponds Brooks would be more visible and we'd have a better chance but it's been a very erratic Comet sometimes getting outbursts which means it could be a little bit brighter or it may not be so it's something that we really won't know until that time on April 8th when the sun is eclipsed by our moon. So that was our picture of the day for March 18th of 2024 it was titled Comet Ponds Brooks' Swirling Coma We'll be back again tomorrow for the next picture previewed to be sounding out a cosmic jellyfish so we'll see what that is about tomorrow and until then have a great day everyone and I will see you in class.