Althought I was clouded out last night, I’ve been enjoying the many pictures which arrived in my inbox overnight. Here are some sent to BBC News, and very lovely they are too.
Or at least, they are until we click through to picture 5, where we’re told that
Comet McNaught is passing close to the Sun, whose gravity pulls material off, giving it a big and visible ‘debris field’
which happens to be complete rubbish (as well as annoying english teachers around the world by only mustering ‘big’ and ‘visible’ as adjectives). It is the warming of the comet as it approaches the Sun that leads to the expulsion of material, which is then driven away from the Sun by the solar wind. Nothing to do with gravity at all. But I didn’t need to tell you that, did I?
UpdateBBC site now corrected.
Stuart Atkinson on January 15, 2007
Had a nightmare of a time trying to see the comet from up here in Cumbria! Almost constant wind and rain, and the comet’s low elevation have made seeing it – well, a “challenge” shall we say! I managed 3 glimpses of it tho, all reported on the “Cumbrian Sky” blog, and my final glimpse – actually in the rain – inspired my latest astronomical poem, which you can find at:
http://journals.aol.com/stuartatk/TheVerse/entries/2007/01/12/a-comet-tale/677
Now been trying for THREE DAYS to spot the comet in daylight, but the clouds just won’t part…
Judith-Anne MacKenzie on January 21, 2007
I saw yesterday some photos of Comet McNaught, taken by Rob McNaught himself from Australia on 19th and 20th January, that are so amazing that a whole room full of astronomers gasped. Here is the web address – well worth a look.
http://msowww.anu.edu.au/~rmn/C2006P1new.htm