Interstellar Comet 2I Borisov

Explanation: From somewhere else in the Milky Way galaxy, Comet 2I/Borisov was just visiting the Solar System. Discovered by amateur astronomer Gennady Borisov on August 30, 2019, the first known interstellar comet is seen in these two Hubble Space Telescope images from November and December 2019. On the left, a distant background galaxy near the line-of-sight to Borisov is blurred as Hubble tracked the speeding comet and dust tail about 327 million kilometers from Earth. At right, 2I/Borisov appears shortly after perihelion, its closest approach to Sun. European Southern Observatory observations indicate that this comet may never have passed close to any star before its 2019 perihelion passage. Borisov's closest approach to our fair planet, a distance of about 290 million kilometers, came on December 28, 2019. Even though Hubble's sharp images don't resolve the comet's nucleus, they did lead to estimates of less than 1 kilometer for its diameter.

Page 2

This was an unusual type of solar eclipse. It is the Earth's Moon that eclipses the Sun. Venus took a turn in 2012 The phase of Venus became thinner as it became better aligned with the Sun. The phase of Venus dropped to zero as the alignment became perfect. Our parent star was crossed by the dark spot of Venus. The situation could be labeled a Venusian eclipse with a large ring of fire. The Sun was imaged in three colors of ultraviolet light by the Earth-orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory, with the dark region to the right corresponding to a hole. As Venus continued in its path, a crescent phase appeared again. The next Venusian transit will take place in 2117