Check out this time lapse video of the Giacobini–Zinner comet from reddit user u/jostef0:

You know what a comet looks like. If I tell you to close your eyes and imagine a comet, you have a mental picture in your head of what a comet looks like. Your comet is an amalgam of all the illustrations you saw in science books growing up (with a bit of the opening of Star Trek: The Next Generation thrown in for good measure)

This real comet tweaks that a bit. “That’s the thing from the picture!”

Time lapses give us a new perspective on our place in a slow-moving universe. If you look up, you can see the sky. If you wait long enough, you can see the stars move. But, like the Flaming Lips said, “it’s just an illusion caused by the world spinning round.” Check out this video, where the image is stabilized to the stars instead of the Earth:

Seeing the Earth spinning like that changed the way I look at the night sky. And it’s important to look up when there’s a clear night. It’s easy to forget how gut-wrenchingly awesome the night sky can be. If you still have time, please check out what happens when people look up: