Mentioned regularly in online, printed and TV news was the
Comet McNaught, the "Great Comet of 2007", discovered on August 7, 2006 by British-Australian astronomer Robert H. McNaught at Siding Springs, not far from Canberra, ACT.
I of course made a mental note to look for it, then the clouds came in (see "We'll All be Rooned", below) and relieved the drought. I forgot about it until today, when a friend phoned and reminded me of it. He had viewed it from the beach last night and it sounded spectacular, so, with clear weather tonight, I looked for it from about 8.30 pm. I gave up about an hour later but, going in my back door, glanced a little left of where I expected, and there it was, tail and all, in the southwest a little above the trees.
I decided to try and capture it on the digital. About 30 tries later I loaded them on the PC and discarded the lot. At 10 pm I tried five or six more shots. Three were sort of okay and one worked well enough - for a hand held digital which had its own idea about exposures, braced against a sliding door which regularly slid.
To see some decent exposures, of course, go on the WWW, but I rather liked a 5-second exposure by
Noel Munford of Palmerston North Astronomical Society, who took a nice twilight shot over Lake Horowhenua in Levin, on New Zealand's North Island.
The comet has been visible unaided since early January 2007, weather of course permitting. It was visible in the northern hemisphere near Venus, until about 13 January 2007 and could even be seen in daylight from January 12 to 14. It will fade rapidly in early February. And it won't be back - it's a non-periodic comet.
If my one decent photo falls short of the others on the web, I had more luck - despite the awkward location - when I found a dragonfly, inspired by last week's warm weather, clinging to my kitchen fly screen when surprised by the cooler, wetter weather on the weekend.
Don't forget you can click the pics to see a bigger version.
