Astrophotographer Josh Durie from the UK took a unique photograph of comet C/2024 G3, which was discovered in 2024 and came closest to the Sun for the first time in 160,000 years. But taking this photo was not easy, writes Space.

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Comet C/2024 G3 takes about 160,000 years to complete its orbit around the Sun, according to scientists who discovered it last year.. But for the first time in thousands of years, it flew up to our star on January 13 and was at a very close distance from the Sun: 14 million km. Despite this, the comet survived a close encounter with our star and went back into deeper space and continued to revolve around the Sun in a very elongated orbit..

When the comet approached the Sun, it reflected maximum sunlight, and therefore its brightness was comparable to the brightness of Venus in the night sky. Even on January 15, Comet C/2024 G3 was still bright enough to be clearly visible. So astrophotographer Josh Dury decided to take advantage of this opportunity to take a photo of a comet that can be seen once in a lifetime..

According to Dury, the comet could not be photographed in the light of the Sun, because in that case it would not be visible, and therefore it was necessary to wait until the Sun set and take the picture at dusk.

Initially, Dury wanted to take a photograph of the comet near his home, but it turned out to be not so simple. Heavy fog covered the area. So the astrophotographer went to another location and found that the sky was still covered with clouds. But shortly after sunset the sky cleared for a while.

" Time was of the essence and it was running out quickly,"

After the comet became visible in the sky, the astrophotographer received the desired images and within 5 minutes the area was covered with fog and the sky was covered with clouds.

This photo of Dury not only shows the beauty of Comet C/2024 G3, but also highlights the difficulties of capturing fleeting cosmic events.

As Focus already wrote, the Earth’s temporary satellite has an unexpected origin. Scientists have found out where asteroid 2024 PT5 came from, which for a couple of months was a temporary satellite of our planet.

Focus also wrote that the seventh test of the SpaceX Starship rocket, owned by Elon Musk, ended in an explosion. The upper part of the rocket, that is, the Starship spacecraft, exploded a few minutes after separation from the lower part and the cause of the disaster is still unknown.