APOD 2.4

Today's APOD is taken from November 9th and is an image of a comet called Lovejoy.

The bright stars near the comet is called the M44 star cluster but better known as the Beehive cluster. This is currently the brightest comet in our night sky and is actually visible from the naked eye. NASA is showing this picture to get people excited about the upcoming ISON comet that has recently become much brighter and will probably be visible to people with the naked eye.The green color the comet has is coming from the coma of the comet aka the center and is radiating with heat from passing near the sun. Lovejoy is currently about half of an AU away from us and a little over 1 AU from the sun.  That white glow at the bottom of the photo is actually a really bright star called Delta Cancri. The main reason I chose this photo is because I am studying comets and meteors for my astronomy project for the quarter and am actually learning a lot from both the internet and the textbook.