Comets


Star

Finding what's left after the killer comet

Maureen Moses
The Daily Aztec
Thu, 15 Mar 2007 08:36 UTC
The comet that killed the dinosaurs opened the evolutionary door for one of Earth's most diverse groups of creatures: mammals. David Archibald, Ph.D., a professor of evolutionary biology at San Diego State, has made this transition from dinosaurs to mammals his expertise.

Archibald studies early mammalian fossils and is trying to constrain the origins of the phylum to which humans belong. His research has taken him around the world in search of the remains of terrestrial creatures.
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Magic Wand

Chile's Skies Light Up This Weekend With Comet Mcnaught

Laurel Bernstein
Santiago Times
Sat, 20 Jan 2007 15:37 UTC
Look to the western sky this weekend and see what is being called the most brilliant comet to grace the space around Earth since 1965. Comet McNaught will be visible from most of Chile for the next few days, so hope that the current cloud cover will disappear and set the stage for a beautiful cosmic experience.
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Bizarro Earth

Dwarf planet 'becoming a comet'

Paul Rincon
BBC News online
Wed, 17 Jan 2007 09:10 UTC
An unusual dwarf planet discovered in the outer Solar System could be en route to becoming the brightest comet ever known.
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Bizarro Earth

Brightest comet in 40 years in Australian skies


News.com.au
Mon, 15 Jan 2007 07:54 UTC
THE brightest comet in Australia's skies for more than 40 years will be visible from Jan 15th, astronomers have said.

Dr James Biggs, director of the Perth Observatory, said the McNaught Comet is currently at its closest approach around the Sun and will be visible to West Australians from Monday 15th for about a week.

"It should be easy to locate. Find a vantage point with an unobstructed view and look low on the horizon near where the Sun has set, in the direction of south-west, around 9pm (WDT)," Dr Biggs said.
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Display

Scotland: 'Fireball' calls blamed on comet


BBC News
Mon, 15 Jan 2007 02:37 UTC
A major Royal Navy and police search carried out near Dumfries has been blamed on sightings of a comet.

The alert was raised at about 1700 GMT on Friday when police operators started receiving calls about a "burning light" spotted above the town.

©BBC
The comet is believed to have sparked a string of calls to police
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Magic Wand

Comet McNaught likely to outshine planet Venus


IT Wire
Fri, 12 Jan 2007 17:40 UTC
Cometary experts have calculated that the orbit of Comet McNaught should come as near as 15.8 million miles (25.4 million kilometers) from the Sun (what is called perihelion) on January 12, 2007. Thus, its brightness should peak on that date. At that time, it could be tens of times brighter than the planet Venus.
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Magic Wand

A Bright Comet Is Coming


SOHO
Wed, 10 Jan 2007 16:55 UTC
If you watch the morning or evening sky these days and have a clear view of the horizon, you will be able to spot a bright object with a prominent tail. That object is comet C/2006 P1 (McNaught). It was discovered on August 7th, 2006 by the hugely successful comet discoverer Rob McNaught (Siding Spring Survey). At time of discovery, the comet was a very faint object, but the predicted perihelion distance (closest distance to the sun) of just 0.17 astronomical units indicated that the object has the potential to become very bright indeed.
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Sherlock

Comets hold life chemistry clues

Jonathan Amos
BBC
Fri, 15 Dec 2006 12:00 UTC
The idea that comets delivered the chemical "seeds" for life to the early Earth has been given a big boost.

Scientists studying the tiny grains of material recovered from Comet Wild-2 by Nasa's Stardust mission have found large, complex carbon-rich molecules.

They are of the type that could have been important precursor components of the initial reactions that gave rise to the planet's biochemistry.

The first full analysis of the Wild-2 grains is reported in Science magazine.
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Star

Meteor shower could be sign of comet that could come dangerously close to earth


HELSINGIN SANOMAT
Fri, 01 Dec 2006 12:00 UTC
Jarmo Moilanen, a municipal computer expert and amateur astronomer in the Finnish community of Vaala, has detected a new shower of meteors in the tale of a hitherto unknown comet.

Moilanen's two monitoring cameras that he keeps pointed at the sky and linked to his computer, registered an unexpected meteor shower already in October last year.
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Meteor

Sunset 'comet' reported across western victoria


The Telegraph
Mon, 27 Nov 2006 12:00 UTC
RESIDENTS in central and western Victoria have reported seeing a bright light, possibly a comet, streaking across the sky just before sunset.

Callers to ABC Radio reported seeing the bright green coloured object shooting westward in the sky from Bendigo to Horsham in the state's northwest down to Colac in the southwest.
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