Comet McNaught - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Comet McNaught in Perth skies. NASA JPL Small-Body Database ... Comet McNaught photo gallery from Southern Hemisphere. NASA Astronomy Pictures of the Day: ...
en.wikipedia.org

Comet McNaught Photo Gallery
Spaceweather.com offers a gallery of images, submitted from around the world, capturing Comet McNaught (C/2006 P1) in the January sky.
www.spaceweather.com

Comet McNaught in the Southern Hemisphere
Comet McNaught is the brightest comet to pass across the Southern Hemisphere sky ... Comet McNaught is about 100 times brighter than Halley's Comet. ...
www.cometmcnaught.net

SPACE.com -- The Great Comet of 2007: Watch it on the Web
Comet McNaught is now also visible to armchair astronomers via images posted to the Internet from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft.
www.space.com

Spaceweather.com: Comet McNaught (C/2006 P1)
Summary: Comet McNaught swung by the Sun in mid-January 2007. ... The majesty of Comet McNaught captured from Kariotahi Beach on Auckland's west ...
www.spaceweather.com

NASA - A Bright Comet Is Coming
Image right: Comet McNaught from Hammerfest, Norway Jan. 6, 2007. ... Current estimates put comet McNaught at magnitude 0 to -1, and it is still brightening. ...
www.nasa.gov

SPACE.com -- Amazing Comet Visible in Broad Daylight
A comet that has generated tremendous excitement the past week became visible in ... It shone at magnitude minus 7. Comet McNaught, dazzling in pictures, is now far ...
www.space.com

APOD: 2007 January 22 - The Magnificent Tail of Comet McNaught
A different astronomy and space science related image is featured each day, along with a brief explanation. ... Comet McNaught, the brightest comet in decades, ...
apod.nasa.gov

C/2006 P1 (McNaught)
In the days that followed, comet McNaught brightened rapidly. ... Comet McNaught entered the field of the Solar Terrestrial Relations ...
cometography.com

Watch spectacular comet on the Web - Space.com
Comet McNaught is the bright object coming in from the upper left corner in this ... McNaught discovered this comet when it was a few degrees east of the "head" of ...
www.msnbc.msn.com

Warning: mkdir() [function.mkdir]: Permission denied in /home/webs/affiliatelib2/CacheManager.php on line 12

Warning: mkdir() [function.mkdir]: No such file or directory in /home/webs/affiliatelib2/CacheManager.php on line 12

Warning: fopen(/home/templatecore2cache//*cluesnet.com/ec/ec8dd882f58e4268e6aeef0196fb28568d273c69.tc2cache) [function.fopen]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/webs/affiliatelib2/CacheManager.php on line 130

Warning: fwrite(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in /home/webs/affiliatelib2/CacheManager.php on line 131

Warning: fclose(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in /home/webs/affiliatelib2/CacheManager.php on line 132

{{Infobox Comet| name=C/2006 P1 (McNaught)| image= on 23 January 2007], 2006, [2007)]
25,544,000 kilometre| semimajor=-5681.10388683 AU| aphelion=| eccentricity=1.00003006| period=| inclination=77.82768004°| last_p=January 12, 2007 [comet discovered on August 7 2006 by British-Australian astronomer Robert H. McNaught. It was the brightest comet in over 40 years, and was easily visible to the naked eye for observers in the Southern Hemisphere in January and February 2007.

With an estimated peak Apparent magnitude of -6.0, the comet was the second brightest since 1935. Around perihelion on January 12, it was visible worldwide in broad daylight. Its tail measured an estimated 35 degrees in length at its peak.

Discovery McNaught discovered the comet in a CCD image on August 7, 2006, in the constellation Ophiuchus, shining very dimly at a magnitude of about +17. From August through November 2006, the comet was imaged and tracked as it moved through Ophiuchus and Scorpius, brightening as high as apparent magnitude +9, still too dim to be seen with the unaided eye. Then, for most of December, the comet was lost in the glare of the sun.

Upon recovery in late December, it became apparent that the comet was brightening very rapidly, reaching naked-eye visibility in early January 2007. It was visible to northern hemisphere observers, in Sagittarius (constellation) and surrounding constellations, until about January 13. Perihelion was January 12 at a distance of 0.17 Astronomical unit. Recent Comet Brightness Estimates This was close enough to the Sun to be observed by the space-based Solar_and_Heliospheric_Observatory. The comet entered SOHO's LASCO C3 camera's field of view on January 12, and was viewable on the World Wide Web in near real-time. The comet exited SOHO's field of view on January 16. Due to its proximity to the sun, the Northern Hemisphere ground-based viewers had a short window for viewing, and the comet could be spotted only during bright twilight.

(green) of Comet McNaught on January 14, 2007 and the four orbits (orange) of the inner planets. Earth is the blue dot on the right. The Milky Way can be seen on the lower left. The comet orbits clockwise.

As it reached perihelion on January 12, it became the brightest comet since Comet Ikeya-Seki in 1965. The comet was dubbed the Great Comet of 2007 by Space.com. The Great Comet of 2007: Watch it on the Web Yahoo News, January by Joe Rao of SPACE.com Skywatching Columnist. Accessed January 16, 2007 On January 13 and 14, 2007, the comet attained an estimated maximum apparent magnitude of -6.0, as reported by several observers in the Northern hemisphere. Recent Comet Brightness Estimates

The comet was visible in daylight about 5°- 10° southeast of the sun from January 12 to 14, with a peak brightness of magnitude -5.5. spaceweather.com Perigee (closest approach to the Earth) was January 15, 2007, at a distance of 0.82 AU.

After passing the sun, McNaught became visible in the Southern hemisphere. In Australia, according to Siding Spring Observatory at Coonabarabran, where the comet was discovered, it was to have reached its theoretical peak in brightness on Sunday January 14 just after sunset, Siding Spring Survey when it would have been visible for 23 minutes. On January 15 the comet was observed at Perth Observatory with an estimated apparent magnitude of -4.0.

The comet has faded out of view. It may still be visible to a very large telescope, near the constellation Chamaeleon. P1 magnitude plot

Scientific results Spacecraft passes through the tail The Ulysses (spacecraft) made an unexpected pass through the tail of the comet on February 3,2007. . Evidence of the encounter was published on the October 1,2007 issue of the Astrophysical Journal. Ulysses flew through McNaught's ion tail 160 million miles from the comet's core and instrument readings showed that there was "complex chemistry" in the region.

The Solar Wind Ion Composition Spectrometer (SWICS) aboard Ulysses measured the composition speed of the comet tail and solar wind, and detected unexpected ions within the comet's tail and found that it had a major impact on the surrounding solar wind. It's the first time that researchers have detected O3+ oxygen ions (atoms of oxygen with a positive charge because they have five electrons instead of eight) near a comet. This suggested that the solar wind ions, originally missing most of their electrons, picked up some of their missing electrons as they passed through McNaught's atmosphere.

Besides that, SWICS found that even at 160 million miles from the comet's nucleus, the tail had slowed the solar wind to half its normal speed. The solar wind should usually be about 435 miles per second at that distance from the Sun, but inside the comet's ion tail, it was less than 249 miles per second."This was very surprising to me. Way past the orbit of Mars, the solar wind felt the disturbance of this little comet. It will be a serious challenge for us theoreticians and computer modellers to figure out the physics,"-- space science professor, Michael Combi.

Prof. George Gloeckler, the principal investigator on the Solar Wind Ion Composition Spectrometer (SWICS), said the discovery was important as the composition of comets told them about conditions approximately 4.5 billion years ago when the solar system was formed. "Here we got a direct sample of this ancient material which gives us the best information on cometary composition. We're still in the process of figuring out what it tells us. We're contributing part of the whole puzzle".

"The benefits of such an observation are important. They constrain the interactions of such comets with the Sun, including how the comets lose mass. They also examine the question of how a sudden injection of neutral and cold material interacts with hot solar-like plasmas. That occurs in other places of the universe and we were able to study it right here,"--space science professor, Thomas Zurbuchen.

Image gallery

Image:Comet_McNaught.jpg| Over Iceland on 9 JanuaryImage:McNaughtComet.jpg], Western Australia on 16 JanuaryImage:Cometperth3.jpg], Western Australia at 9 p.m. on 17 JanuaryImage:IMG 7046.JPG], Fremantle, Western Australia, Western Australia on 17 January. The lights at the bottom are navigation lights in Gage Roads.Image:Comet McNaught Windhoek 2007 17 January.jpg], Namibia on 17 January at 8 p.m. local timeImage: IMG_2331 medium.jpg], at San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina, on 17 JanuaryImage:Cometmcnaughtchrisn1.jpg] from Pukekohe, New ZealandImage:IMG_1673.JPG] from La Perouse, Sydney, AustraliaImage:Comet McNaught Signal Hill 20070119 1.jpg], Cape Town on 19 January. The silhouette of Lion's Head (Cape Town) is visible on the left, while on the right Venus (planet) sets over the Atlantic Ocean.Image:sat_comet_WEB.jpg]Image:100_1464.JPG|Villa Alemana Region of Valparaiso, Chile on 20 JanuaryImage:2007 01 21 Comet McNaught Canberra Red Hill.jpg], Canberra on 21 JanuaryImage:Mcnaught daylight20070113.jpg] at 14:00 UTC in Gais, Switzerland.Image:Comet_tail.jpg] after the comet herself was long gone. The picture also shows the Moon and Venus.

References and footnotes

External links

• Info and gallery, from skytonight
• Comet McNaught in Perth skies
• Comet orbital elements and diagram, from a NASA website
• Current hotshots of comet, from NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory website
• Animation of recent images within LASCO C3's FOV
• Comet McNaught photo gallery from Southern Hemisphere
• NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
• January 5 - Comet McNaught Heads for the Sun
• January 9 - McNaught Now Brightest Comet in Decades
• January 13 - Comet Over Krakow
• January 15 - Comet McNaught Over Catalonia
• January 17 - Comet McNaught from New STEREO Satellite
• January 18 - Southern Comet
• January 19 - McNaught's Matinee
• January 20 - SOHO: Comet McNaught Movie
• January 22 - The Magnificent Tail of Comet McNaught
• January 24 - A Comet Tail Horizon
• February 1 - A Tail of Two Hemispheres
• February 5 - Comet Between Fireworks and Lightning
• February 12 - Comet McNaught Over New Zealand

BBC NEWS | In Pictures | In pictures: Comet McNaught
Your pictures of the brightest comet in 30 years, captured in various UK regions. ... Comet McNaught is lighting up the sky around dawn and dusk. This image was captured over ...

Comet McNaught - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Comet McNaught, also known as the Great Comet of 2007 and given the designation C/2006 P1, is a non-periodic comet discovered on August 7, 2006 by British-Australian astronomer ...

Spaceweather.com: Comet McNaught (C/2006 P1)
Summary: Comet McNaught swung by the Sun in mid-January 2007. Fierce solar heat turned it into the brightest comet in 40 years; for a few days it was ...

Category:Comet McNaught - Wikimedia Commons
Media in category "Comet McNaught" The following 42 files are in this category, out of 42 total.

APOD: 2007 January 22 - The Magnificent Tail of Comet McNaught
A different astronomy and space science related image is featured each day, along with a brief explanation.

Just passing, the best comet for 32 years | Mail Online
And suitably for a phenomenon once seen as a portent of doom, it was spotted over World's End. Comet McNaught, which is set to shine brighter than the planet Venus this weekend, was ...

Comet McNaught
Comet McNaught. 10 January 2007. Image taken by Observatory Staff. Comet McNaught photographed by ULO staff Mick Pearson and Thomas Schlichter at Mill Hill Park, North London, on ...

Comet McNaught prepares show for Soho • The Register
Those of us who live behind the almost permacloud that has covered the south of the UK for the last umpteen days will not have noticed, but apparently there is a comet currently ...

Comet McNaught, 20th January 2007 (From Science Photo Library)
Comet McNaught. This comet, also known as C/2006 P1, was the brightest to appear in the sky since Ikeya-Seki in 1965. Due to its proximity to the Sun it could only be seen at dusk.

APOD: 2007 January 9 - McNaught Now Brightest Comet in Decades
A different astronomy and space science related image is featured each day, along with a brief explanation.