Saturday, January 20, 2007

Comet McNaught as seen over New Zealand


It's been elusive, blocked by clouds a couple of nights, but tonight Comet McNaught was unbelievably spectacular. I hope you saw it. It appeared in WA skies a bit after 9.00pm and grew in size and splendour over the next hour before setting below the horizon, though it's huge tail was still visible for some time afterwards. I'd been scanning the sky hoping it would reappear, the sky was clear and cloudless, and then it came into view and I was awed but I was not prepared for how much more impressive it would become as it traversed the night sky. I've never seen anything as beautiful or inspiring. Haley's comet was a huge disappointment but McNaught totally makes up for it.
I was telling everyone to look at it including all my taxi customers. I pulled up at the yacht club where there was a room full of bingo playersand I interrupted them, much to the bingo callers disgust! But when people realised what I was saying they rushed outside and all oohed ahhed and thanked me for telling them it was visible.
Then I started working the phones, ringing everyone I could think of to tell them to get outside and have a look. Only two of them had seen it, Letchy and Undies, the rest were just as impressed as I was when they saw it.
It was phenomenal.

It's no wonder the star of Bethlehem created such a stir when it appeared at the birth of Christ, if it was anything like this comet it would have been amazing!

If you missed it, check it out tomorrow night, in the south west, left of mercury not long after sunset.
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1 comment:

Peter said...

Haven't been able to see the comet yet, and I believe time is running out, we have had almost complete cloud cover each night for the last week, no bloody rain, but lots of cloud.