Comet gets closer every day

8:29am Friday 23rd November 2007

Comments (0)   Have your say »

JUST when sky-watchers thought we had seen everything weird that the night sky had to offer, and when we thought it could not surprise us any more, the universe jumps out at us from around a corner, shouts boo!' in our ear and runs away giggling.

That is exactly what it has done with a comet visible in the sky right now.

Comet Holmes has been visible for quite a while, but only as a tiny smudge in a pretty large telescope. But on the evening of October 24, Comet Holmes went a bit crazy, and started to get brighter, and brighter - and brighter!

A day later, having brightened a million fold, it was visible to the naked eye, and since then it has grown in both brightness and size to the point where it is now clearly visible without a telescope or binoculars.

Remember Comet Hale-Bopp back in 1997? Those twin tails? Beautiful, wasn't it? Sadly Comet Holmes looks nothing like that; it looks like a round, misty smudge the size of the Moon, glowing softly among the stars of Perseus.

But, as the photo (above) taken by Ken Hough, chairman of the Eddington Astronomical Society and one of our best astro-photographers, shows, it is still amazing.

To find out more see the Leisure section of this week's Westmorland Gazette.