Explanation:
Comet McNaught, the Great Comet of 2007, was the brightest comet of the last 40 years.
Its spectacular
tail spread across the sky and was breathtaking to behold from dark locations for many Southern Hemisphere observers.
The head of the
comet remained quite bright and was
easily visible
to even city observers without any optical aide.
Part of the
spectacular tail was visible just above the horizon after
sunset for many northern observers as well.
Comet C/2006 P1 (McNaught), which reached an
estimated peak brightness of
magnitude -6 (minus six), was caught by the
comet's discoverer in the
above image soon after sunset in 2007 January from
Siding Spring Observatory in
Australia.
The robotic
Ulysses spacecraft fortuitously flew through
Comet McNaught's
tail and found, unexpectedly, that the speed of the
solar wind
dropped significantly.
digg_url = 'http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap091206.html'; digg_skin = 'compact';
