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Comet to Make Brief Flyby
By Rory Sweeney
The Times Leader
01/15/07 9:23 AM PT
Comet McNaught, an unusually bright comet, will be visible from various vantage points on Earth as it flies by, but amateur astronomers will have to get their timing right to catch a glimpse of it. It will be visible only in the minutes just after the sun sets because of its close proximity to the sun.
The amateur astronomy community is abuzz about the coming of perhaps the brightest comet in 30 years.
Under the right conditions, comet McNaught, discovered by R.H. McNaught in August, will be visible as a "fuzzy ball with a tail coming off of it" for the next few days just after the sun sets in the western sky, Kristi Concannon, a physics and astronomy professor at King's College in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., said Saturday.
"It will be just above the horizon and just right of where the sun sets," she said, but warned to be punctual. "Because it's so close to the sun, it's not going to be visible at night."
After that, it will be lost in the glare of the sun for a week or so while it orbits around and then will be visible again for a while in the minutes before sunrise, she said.
Comets visible to the naked eye come around about once a decade, she said. The last one, comet Hale-Bopp, caused ripples of excitement beyond the sky-watching community when it was visible for months in 1996 and 1997.
Brighter than comet Hale-Bopp, comet McNaught currently matches the magnitude of comet West, which flashed across the sky in 1975.
Stargazers anticipate the orbit of comet McNaught around the sun will only enhance its visibility.
"What we're hoping is that when it comes back around the sun, it will have released more gas and it could potentially be brighter," bright enough to be visible during the day, Concannon said.
Won't Reveal Much
The event, while spectacular, holds little promise of advancing our understanding of what "are in essence dirty snowballs" from an icy band of leftover material from the forming of the solar system orbiting beyond Pluto.
The material is occasionally "perturbed" into a solar-system-spanning orbit around our sun.
"It's not that common for a comet to be bright enough to be seen during the day, but it has happened before," she said. "For whatever reason or another, this one appears to be releasing a lot of gas."
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