{"id":24635,"date":"2021-12-20T05:56:59","date_gmt":"2021-12-20T05:56:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/?p=24635"},"modified":"2021-12-20T05:56:59","modified_gmt":"2021-12-20T05:56:59","slug":"the-comet-and-the-fireball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/?p=24635","title":{"rendered":"The Comet and the Fireball"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><img src='https:\/\/apod.nasa.gov\/image\/2112\/LeonardMeteor_Poole_960.jpg' style='max-width:600px;' \/><\/p>\n<div>This picture was supposed to feature a comet. Specifically, a series of images of the brightest comet of 2021 were being captured: Comet Leonard. But the universe had other plans. Within a fraction of a second, a meteor so bright it could be called a fireball streaked through just below the comet. And the meteor&#8217;s flash was even more green than the comet&#8217;s coma. The cause of the meteor&#8217;s green was likely magnesium evaporating from the meteor&#8217;s pebble-sized core, while the cause of the comet&#8217;s green was likely diatomic carbon recently ejected from the comet&#8217;s city-sized nucleus. The images were taken 10 days ago over the Sacramento River and Mt. Lassen in California, USA. The fireball was on the leading edge of this year&#8217;s Geminid Meteor Shower &#8212; which peaked a few days later. Comet Leonard is now fading after reaching naked-eye visibility last week &#8212; but now is moving into southern skies. via NASA <a href=\"https:\/\/apod.nasa.gov\/apod\/ap211220.html\"><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This picture was supposed to feature a comet. Specifically, a series of images of the brightest comet of 2021 were being captured: Comet Leonard. But the universe had other plans. <a href=\"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/?p=24635\" class=\"more-link\">[&hellip;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"Layout":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[10,12],"class_list":["entry","author-admin","post-24635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-whatsup","tag-ifttt","tag-nasa"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24635"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24636,"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24635\/revisions\/24636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}