Dazzling Southern display
These stunning views of Comet McNaught (C/2006 P1) were captured by its discoverer, Rob McNaught, from the Sliding Spring Observatory in Australia (roughly 400 km Northwest of Sydney). The images were taken on January 20th after sunset. The 90-second (top) and 50-second (bottom) exposures beautifully highlight the wispy remnants of the comet’s dust tail.
Observers in the Northern hemisphere weren’t treated to this intense a display, but those who were graced with fair weather still raved about it, regardless. I wasn’t as fortunate, sadly, never receiving a suitable viewing opportunity due to cloud cover, rain, ice, and snow.
Observers down under still have a chance or two remaining to catch the comet before it disappears below the horizon. McNaught’s dust tail stretches far enough, though, that it’s still visible from dark sky locations in North America an hour or two after sunset (and SkyTonight reports that such a thing hasn’t occurred since the mid-18th century!). Contributors to Spaceweather’s image gallery have succeeded in capturing some lovely parting glimpses.
Yesterday evening I was treated to the first clear skies at sunset in roughly two weeks, and while I don’t live far enough away from city lights to view the tail’s remnants with the naked eye, I was able to capture a couple of its streaks (poorly) with camera exposures of 20 seconds or greater.
The next great comet will simply have to be courteous enough to appear during a long stretch of stable, cloudless evenings.
2 Responses to “Dazzling Southern display”
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Hi Woverine, how are you!
(the following is just for “suppose, or in case”, and don’t take it otherwise), just a curiocity.
Read:
well in case of Mcnaught comet fall in the pacific like big ocen on the earth so what will be the refercations of that falling in the sea!, a. it will melt in the water,( since it has maximum parts made of ice) b. the mud will be add in the ocean, c)great tides will be follow in the ocean, may hamper the routine marine life, d) earth will get a big jerk, e)the water mass in the ocean will be spread alongside and the original ocean will be turn into a dry valley.
which question would you like to [*] tick mostly or all are applicable!!
sunil.
Hi sunil,
I’m not able to find any estimates of the comet’s mass, so I’m kind of hard-pressed to offer concrete numbers depicting the aftermath of a hypothetical impact. Let’s just say it would be bad — very, very , very bad.
If we were to imagine a head-on collision, assume that the comet is mostly ice, and that it were to smack into the ocean, the impact would certainly cause incredible tsunamis and massive devastation (say goodbye to coastline cities). I remember reading that McNaught was traveling very quickly, so even if the comet’s nucleus was fairly small (say, one kilometer or so in diameter), the impact would release massive amounts of energy, a few hundred thousand megatons worth. That would pose huge problems for the overall climate in addition to wildlife, and displace a significant amount of water in the ocean — it wouldn’t leave it a dry valley as you put it, but it could certainly shift enough of a volume of water that it might (very, very slightly) affect the Earth’s rotation, much like the huge tsunami in December 2004. The death toll in human and other forms life would be unimaginably high. It would be an epic disaster.
A collision of that magnitude only occurs about once every 850,000 years though, so we can rest easy.