Comet McNaught: Has astonomers doing the Haka!

Beautiful, vivid, but elusive comet Mcnaught could hide no longer this evening. A massive audience had gathered all over Cape Town (and probably the sub-equatorial continent) to view the little pest that has been hiding behind clouds all week. It’s long tail seems to go on and on for what we call in astrophysics, a very long way.

In fact the bright head, a cloud of dust is more than 100,000 kilometres across wrapped around a dirty iceblock a few kilometres across.The comet’s tail has been estimated at 15 million kilometres long.

She appeared just after dusk to the South of the sunset at an elevation of “a-clenched-fist-at-arms-length”. A very gorgeous comet she is and deserves a better name, like perhaps Marinda or Tabitha. Robert H. McNaught, allready has 31 comets named after him.
Unfortunately I did not have a camera with me, not to worry it will be back in a 85000 years and can you imagine how many mega pixels I will have then, Ha!

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