NASA's Swift Sees Comet Garradd (IMAGE)

NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

NASA's Swift Sees Comet Garradd

Caption

Swift's UVOT acquired this image of Comet Garradd (C/2009 P1) on April 1, 2012, when the comet was 142 million miles away, or 636 times farther than the moon. Red shows sunlight reflected from the comet's dust; violet shows ultraviolet light produced by hydroxyl (OH), a fragment of water. NGC 2895 is a barred spiral galaxy located 400 million miles away in the constellation Ursa Major. The UVOT image (outlined) is placed within a wider visible image of the region from the Digital Sky Survey.

Credit

NASA/Swift/D. Bodewits (UMD) and S. Immler (GSFC) and DSS/STScI/AURA

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