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COMET McNAUGHT: A fresh comet is swinging through the inner solar system, and it is brightening rapidly as it approaches the sun. Presenting, Comet McNaught (C/2009 R1): Michael Jäger of Stixendorf, Austria, took the picture on June 6th using an 8-inch telescope. The comet's green atmosphere is larger than the planet Jupiter, while the long willowy ion tail stretches more than a million kilometers through space. These dimensions make the comet a fine target for backyard telescopes. Comet McNaught can be found low in the northeastern sky before dawn gliding through the constellation Perseus. It is brightening as it approaches...

A recently discovered comet is surprising skywatchers by becoming brighter than predictions had first suggested and can now be seen with the unaided eye during the next few weeks. Comet McNaught, officially catalogued as C/2009 R1, was discovered by Australian astronomer Robert McNaught last September using the using the 0.5-meter Uppsala Schmidt telescope and a CCD camera. It's the 51st comet that bears McNaught's name. Although initially an extremely faint object, enough observations of the newfound comet were made to allow Brian Marsden of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass., to calculate an orbit. Comet McNaught is expected to...

One wonders... Did the inhabitants of galaxy NGC 891 duck when Comet McNaught flew past the edge-on spiral on the morning of June 8th? Mike O'Connor and Tristan Dilapo took this picture of the cosmic close encounter from Colden, New York: (click on photo to enlarge) "The comet was only 10 degrees above the horizon," says O'Connor. "Nevertheless, we got a good picture using a 12-inch telescope and an SBIG ST9-E camera."And, no, the denizens of that distant galaxy did not flinch, flee, duck or take notice in any way. NGC 891 is 30 million light years away, far removed...

Astronomers have made rare images of the heart of a popular comet and revealed jets of gas spiraling thousands of miles into space. Comet McNaught has been called the Great Comet of 2007 for the show it put on first in the Northern Hemisphere and then south of the equator. The ball of ice and dirt hung frustratingly close to the Sun, however, so many skywatchers never got a good look. The New Technology Telescope (NTT) at the European Southern Observatory in Chile was used to make detailed observations that were released yesterday. Scientists found sodium in the comet's emissions,...

Comet McNaught Over CataloniaCredit & Copyright: Juan Casado (skylook.net) Explanation: This past weekend Comet McNaught peaked at a brightness that surpassed even Venus. Fascinated sky enthusiasts in the Earth's northern hemisphere were treated to an instantly visible comet head and a faint elongated tail near sunrise and sunset. Recent brightness estimates had Comet McNaught brighter than magnitude -5 (minus five) over this past weekend, making it the brightest comet since Comet Ikeya-Seki in 1965, which was recorded at -7 (minus seven). The Great Comet of 2007 reached its brightest as it rounded the Sun well inside the orbit of Mercury....

Comet McNaught has just made its appearance in the SOHO (SOlar and Heliospheric Observatory) "LASCO-3" field (at about the 11:00 position) -- and it is very bright!! The real-time image is viewable at http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/LATEST/current_c3small.mpg. In the next couple of days, the 48-hr MPEGs of the SOHO LASCO-3 field at http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/LATEST/current_c3small.mpg should be well worth watching. ~~~~~~ (The above URL is for the small (256 X 256) MPEG. The larger (512 X 512) MPEG at http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/LATEST/current_c3.mpg appears to have a problem at present.)