#Man ‘plays’ badminton with NEOWISE comet in viral photo

This stunning picture shows a man pretending to play badminton with a comet.
Laurence Douglas-Green/SWNS.com

An English man took a picture of himself “playing” badminton with the NEOWISE comet above the Quantock Hills in Somerset, England, British news agency SWNS reports.

Laurence Douglas-Greene said he wanted to create an image no one had seen yet, despite the comet having been visible on Earth since July 7.

“I go out twice a month to capture the Milky Way and full moon images anyway as astronomy has always fascinated me,” Douglas-Greene told SWNS. “I wanted to create something that nobody has thought of or done yet, to my knowledge. So I kept checking the weather and planned this location because the Quantocks Hills are like my second home — it’s an ideal place to capture images of wildlife, landscape and the night sky.”

Douglas-Greene, who took the image on July 17, said it was a bit of work to keep the badminton racket in the cold air, and he needed several attempts to get it right. Ultimately, he made it work.

“It did take me a few attempts running back and forth but I’m delighted with the overall result.”

NEOWISE, which can be observed with the naked eye, has been visible since July 7, NASA said on its website.

“The comet takes about 6,800 years to make one lap around its long, stretched out orbit, so it won’t visit the inner solar system again for many thousands of years,” the agency explained.

The comet’s closest approach to Earth was on July 22, at a distance of about 64 million miles.