Comet’s Appearance Hailed As ‘Brightest’
By Joe Bauman Deseret Morning News
Sky watchers around the world, including Utahns, have been gaping in awe at Comet McNaught, the brightest comet to sweep through the inner solar system in decades.
The ball of ice and dust was discovered by famed Australian comet- hunter Rob McNaught in August 2006, when it was in the distant reaches of our planetary family. Comet McNaught has been coming closer to the sun ever since, until last Friday, when it swung around our local star and headed back to the depths of space.
Because it reached to within the orbit of Mercury, volatile material fizzed out furiously, making a bright plume of debris. Although it was close to the sun, it was bright enough to see with the naked eye. In fact, it was often bright enough to observe with binoculars during broad daylight, although it is no longer visible.
Viewed Saturday from Red Butte Garden shortly after sunset, the comet briefly made an appearance above the Oquirrh Mountains. As the daylight dimmed, it could be seen as a bright white smudge. Just to the north were the giant masts of Nelson Peak, transmission repeaters that looked like matchsticks on the mountaintop.
McNaught was clearly visible for only five or 10 minutes before slipping lower, into the russet haze of the sunset.
It may have been the last time the comet was visible in a relatively dark sky, and one of the last times it was visible at all. The fact that it could be seen with the solar glare still lighting up the west was remarkable.
“This is intrinsically the brightest comet I have ever personally seen, and I’ve seen dozens since I started observing them in the early ’70s,” Chuck Hards of West Valley City, a noted telescope maker, wrote in an e-mail to the Deseret Morning News.
“It’s also the only comet I have ever seen — albeit with difficulty — during daylight. The only drawback is that it can’t be seen against a dark night sky, so the view isn’t really visually impressive.”
Patrick Wiggins, a NASA Solar System Ambassador to Utah, saw Comet McNaught about 3:55 p.m. on Saturday and again on Sunday.
“It was a cute little thing. Literally, I had never seen a comet during the daytime,” he said. “It’s not unheard of in history, but it’s quite unusual.”
The head, or coma, was almost starlike, “with a stubby little tail,” he said.
“The comet was above and to the left of the sun, so I needed something to block the sunlight. … I didn’t want to accidentally hiccup and move the binoculars down and blind myself.”
He found a place in the shade of a neighbor’s roof so that the roof was covering the sun, and he was able to safely hold up his binoculars. That is something nobody except the most experienced observer should ever do. Otherwise, there is the likelihood of instantly blinding oneself.
“Today when I went out to find it, it was much fainter already,” he said. As it streaks away from the sun, it becomes fainter and fainter, and by the time anyone reads this article, he said, “it would have become so faint that you’re not going to see it” in daylight, even with binoculars.
And it won’t be visible any time except daylight, it’s so near the sun.
Still, within the past couple of weeks it was so bright that in some places people were able to watch it without magnification, during daylight. One man in the southern hemisphere noted that he lay outside for a long time watching the comet and got a sunburn. “He said it was the first time he got a sunburn watching a comet,” Wiggins said.
The most western member of the Salt Lake Astronomical Society, Rob Ratkowski of Maui, Hawaii, first saw the comet at noon Saturday from his home. Then he headed a group of amateur and professional astronomers who visited the summit of Haleakala, which is nearly 10,000 feet above sea level. At 3 p.m. that day, the temperature was 44 degrees, cold for residents of Hawaii.
He used a gobo, a portable device used in the movie industry to block sunlight, shielding himself from the sun and aiming his telescope over the top of the gobo. Ratkowski, a professional photographer for the past 40 years, was delighted with the view.
He “just started shooting pictures and then take a break. I’d go back and take a few more,” he said in a telephone interview.
During the session, close to a fleet of astronomical observatories, many folks turned out to see the comet, including high school students, physicists and a professional astronomer. It was his first daytime comet, Ratkowski said.
He was surprised to see a comet that bright. “Once the sun dropped below the horizon, we couldn’t miss it,” Ratkowski said. He described the comet as “a big splash of red on the horizon.”
Several photos of the comet are posted on the Utah Astronomy Gallery Web site, www.utahastronomy.com/
albums.php. The gallery and the Utah Astronomy Internet bulletin board are maintained by Cynthia Heyman.
E-mail: bau@desnews.com
(c) 2007 Deseret News (Salt Lake City). Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.