Reports are starting to come in that Comet Lovejoy is fading rapidly, which isn't too surprising. As it gets farther from the Sun it gets colder, and the ice on its surface doesn't turn into gas quite so vigorously. It's the cloud of expanding gas that reflects sunlight and makes a comet bright, so there you go. Still, astrophotographer Colin Legg managed to get enough shots to make this wonderful time lapse animation of Lovejoy as seen over Esperance, Australia on the evening of December 26/27:
[embed width="610"]http://vimeo.com/34314682[/embed]
Make sure you make it high resolution, and watch it full screen. The movement of the sky you see here is due to the rotation of the Earth, of course, but if you look carefully you can see the head of the comet moving a small amount relative to the stars. So it looks like we northern hemispherians may never get a ...
