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Science Was that the McNaut comet we saw?
Science Was that the McNaut comet we saw? | Was that the McNaut comet we saw? |
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| by Stan Beer | |
| Monday, 15 January 2007 | |
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The object was easily visible to the naked eye – even to my less than perfect vision. There were no other objects visible in the sky at that point and we became excited.. We knew that this was either a planet or a comet because its clarity increased and it appeared more like a three dimensional sphere when we trained our binoculars on it. However, try as we might, we couldn’t make out a tail. Perhaps the sky was too bright to see the tail or perhaps we had the wrong object. Over the next 30 minutes or so the object moved across the sky in the direction of where the sun had set, tracing an arc from right to left (north to south) and dipping lower on the horizon. It seemed to be moving quite fast relative to us. Eventually the object was lost behind a bank of clouds perched on the horizon and that was the end of it. So did we see a comet or a planet? Given its proximity and speed of movement, I say comet but I have put in a call to the Astronomical Society of Australia to find out for sure.{moscomment}
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