How wonderful to see February and also to learn of the timely arrival of an ancient “green” comet, to be seen in the night skies over the next few days.
A small wood engraving homage to today’s Green Comet
Timely because I am just in the final stages of my small comet project. A set of wood engravings, a lino print and hopefully 3 ceramic pieces all together in a box. I rather lost my momentum with this due to the debilitating effect of January on anything creative I ever attempt. But I am hoping to finish it all later this week. Here are a few images of work in progress.
Proofs of the woodengravings and some trial pages.
A part of the dummy book showing the long print which will fold out from the back.
A proof of the print.
Box making in progress and a trial assembly with paper hinges.
At this stage nothing seems to hang together but hopefully I will be able to post the final thing soon along with some fascinating comet facts and fictions.
But a Green Comet!
Wonderful photo from Abhijit Patil taken in the Pinnacles National Park, California. He describes it as a “green marvel” and explains the optical illusion which appears to show a third tail. Read more here on Earthsky.org.
This particular Comet is C/2022 E3 (ZTF) and first passed by approx 50,000 years ago, think wooly mammoths and sabre toothed tigers roaming the earth. There is such an evocative magic about these wandering chilly entites, originating it is thought in the icy Oort Cloud.
“Its nucleus is thought to be about a mile (1.6 kilometers) across, with tails extending millions of miles (kilometers).”
Why green? “Comets flare green when they carry diatomic carbon—two-atom carbon molecules—which reacts with the sun’s outgassing particles, the solar wind. Many comets possess diatomic carbon, but few also approach the sun as closely as C/2022 E3 (ZTF), meaning they show their color less vividly.” Time Magazine
Read more about it with links to how and where you can see C/2022 on Earthsky.org https://earthsky.org/todays-image/green-comet-photos-and-video-2022-e3-ztf/
Even if I don’t see the comet, just knowing it’s there is a truely wonder-full way to start February and a new creative year. 🙂
We have to wait a bit longer to see it in the Southern hemisphere