Astronomers Celebrate as Comet breaks records

The McNaught comet hanging in the western skies of Sydney this week has surprised Astronomers by becoming the brightest comet in 80 years.

“It’s the chance of lifetime!” raves Prof Tim Bedding of the School of Physics at the University of Sydney. “And the 1927 comet was only visible in the Northern Hemisphere. We’ll probably never get the chance to see something like this again!”

Hungarian-born Astronomer Laszlo Kiss, who took the attached image, is receiving threatening emails from his friends back home in Hungary. “They are envious because of the great view of the comet that I have from the Southern Hemisphere.”

When he next visits Hungary, he will most likely be on the receiving end of some dirty snowballs, just like the comet itself (although perhaps a little smaller). Although the core of the comet itself is a ball of snow and dirt only a couple of kilometres across, its extraordinary tail, tens of millions of kilometres long, has the astronomers gasping. The tail is formed by debris blown off the comet as the sun’s radiation heats the comet’s surface to boiling point. The bright striations in the tail are from successive layers of the comet being blown off. “Comet tails are poorly understood” says Dr Kiss, “this view is unprecedented!”

The tail can be partly seen with the naked eye, but the full glory can be seen through binoculars or with long-exposure photography, like the attached image (6 x 30 second images stitched together). The Comet’s brightness peaked as it passed closest to the sun on Jan 15. It will continue to be visible for the next few days, gradually fading as it moves away from the sun. The waxing moon will also affect visibility over the next week or so.

More of Laszlo’s photos are available at the School of Physics’ website: http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/~laszlo/Comet_McNaught.html

Prof. Tim Bedding (9351 2680)& Dr Laszlo Kiss (9351 4058)