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rickymouse
Wrabbit2000
Never fear, the end is near!
There! Another customer coming to bring us change for a bad experience!
Seriously... I do find it interesting how the Governments are suddenly in a heightened state of alert for flying things in space. Hopefully it's just a 'better late than never' catch up to what really should have been done all this time....but I can't help but wonder too. I'll be interested in seeing where this little guy is off to in such a hurry.
They need to keep an eye on the things that fly for a long time so they can find out how to keep the jets from falling into the ocean. Seems that the government should hire astronomers to track aircraft.
ngchunter
Here's some info on the orbit. It's not going to be a spectacular naked eye comet. "Very bright" meaning magnitude 11, which is still far too dim to see by eye, but to a telescope it's an easy target. It's a southern hemisphere comet which is probably why it wasn't discovered until now, normally comets are found by at least magnitude 14-15 or so; this is what you get when you stop funding for the Siding Spring Survey. Who knows what near earth asteroids are being missed in the southern hemisphere as a result.
www.itelescope.net...
Even though it's a southern hemisphere comet, one of the perks of living in Florida is that much of the southern celestial sphere is available to us. I plan to photograph this comet this weekend if the weather holds.