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Comet Lovejoy

The Comet Lovejoy, as seen by several CCDs.
The Comet Lovejoy, as seen by several CCDs. Image: Marty Murphy, Nikolay Kuropatkin, Huan Lin and Brian Yanny; Dark Energy Survey

This intriguing shot shows the comet Lovejoy traveling through space, about 51 million miles from Earth. In 2015, a team of astronomers found that Lovejoy was spilling about 500 bottles of wine worth of alcohol every second as it streaked through the sky. The individual panels in this image represent each of the 62 CCDs the Dark Energy Camera uses. (CCDs are common in highly sensitive telescopes; the new LSST camera has 189 of them!)

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