14 DAY TRIAL // Astronomers operating the 8.2-meter (27-foot) Subaru Telescope atop Mauna Kea, in Hawaii, were able to create a beautiful image of a comet heading towards a close encounter with the Sun this Christmas. The photograph was snapped in the wee hours of December 3, 2013.
The comet in question, called C/2013 R1, or Comet Lovejoy, is scheduled to reach its perihelion on December 22, when it will pass just 0.81 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun. An AU is the mean distance between the Earth and the Sun, or 150 million kilometers (93 million miles).
The Japanese team operating Subaru used the telescope's Subaru Prime Focus Camera (Suprime-Cam) instrument to snap this image. The device is a 80-megapixel visible-light camera mounted at the prime focus of the observatory. It provides a wide field of view of the night sky, Universe Today reports.
Comet Lovejoy was discovered by astronomer Terry Lovejoy on September 7, 2013. It is a long-period comet that crossed over the Earth's celestial equator to become a northern hemisphere object on October 14, 2013. It remains to be seen whether or not the object will survive its encounter with the Sun.