Comet Watch!! (shorter)

Comet McNaught (long version in the blog)

11:58pm, Tuesday 23 January 2007

I hope you have all had a chance to see this comet!

Last week, I was told to take a look about sunset, Australia time, and after two tries and an hour's vigil, I managed to see a very dim comet with a rather short tail.

I had been getting increasingly annoyed and frustrated because it's not often that I -remember- to go and see these celestial events. For example, I forgot both the Perseids and Leonids shower this year (mid-August and November, respectively. I think)

And for once, I remembered to go and watch for this comet, I even set my cell phone alarm (and the alarms on the cell phones of everyone around me). Day one met with no success, not sure why-- probably I didn't go and look early enough.

The second day I managed to see the comet. It was fuzzy, near the horizon, and the short tail pointed straight up.

Fast forward. Every night since then has been overcast or even rainy. And tonight, on the drive from Adelaide to Melbourne, we stopped at a dark, quiet town near the state borders.

I went out a few times to look for the comet, expecting it to be lower than Venus on the horizon, like it was last week.

All of a sudden, I glanced up, a little farther than I was expecting, and there it was! And this time, it had a tail, a nice, significant, worthy tail. This was about 9:30pm or so.

As the night wore on, 10pm, 11pm, the tail got brighter and brighter. The comet is pretty close to the horizon, but the tail! It's bright, fans upwards and curves ever so slightly to the right (the north, here). The comet dust even makes the neighbouring stars twinkle ever so slightly.

It isn't as bright as Hale-Bopp from 1997, but, WOW, that tail is definitely spectacular.

Have you all heard my story of Hale-Bopp? It's in the longer version of this email, on the blog. Hale Bopp was brighter, but McNaught tonight, definitely had it beat as far as spectacular tails.

If you haven't seen it, find out how you can, because it was definitely one of the top ten celestial moments in my twenty five years of stargazing.

Love,
Debs

P.S. Okay, so Sky and Telescope says that the comet itself is no longer visible in the northern hemisphere, but that the tail should still be obvious. From my view of the very long tail, I think it is quite likely that you can see the tail of the comet.

So go out there tonight and look!