ATLAS

C/2019 Y4 ATLAS, before it fell apart

ATLAS was a Kreutz sungrazer comet. These comets are fragments of a large comet that broke up centuries ago. Their orbits take them extremely close to the Sun, and because of that they often fall apart. Thousands of this family have been discovered so far, but most of them didn’t survive their meeting with the Sun.

Solar Eclipse

2015 partial solar eclipse

2015 partial solar eclipse in Ireland as observed with a shoebox. A camera obscura is the ancestor of the photographic camera. The Latin name means “dark chamber,” and the earliest versions consisted of small darkened rooms with light admitted through a single tiny hole. The result is an inverted image of the outside scene cast on the opposite wall.