3rd Brightest Comet in 70 years Flaunts its Brilliance

Third brightest comet seen in the last 70 years, and the brightest in 30 years, Comet McNaught will be visible in the Northern Hemisphere for a week beginning January 12, International Comet Quarterly at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics reports.

Comet McNaught was discovered by Australian astronomer Robert H. McNaught at the Siding Spring Observatory, near Coonabarabran, New South Wales, Australia on August 7, 2006. The comet catalogued as C/2006 P1 is the 31st comet to bear McNaught's name and is considered brighter than the Comet Hale-Bopp seen in 1995 and Comet West of 1975.

The new comet will make perihelion on January 12, 2007, and will become visible to the naked eye.

After shining near Venus, Aquila, and Ophiuchus, for about 30 minutes after the sun sets in the northern hemisphere, the comet will become visible in the southern hemisphere.

Uncovered as a faint, distant and inconspicuous object, the comet could become even brighter after making its closest pass to the sun on January 12, 2007, astronomers report.

Composed of rock, dust, and ices, a comet is a small body in the solar system that orbits the sun and occasionally exhibits two tails, one made of dust and the other of ionizing gases.

As per astronomy laws, the lower the magnitude number, the brighter the object. The brightest stars in the sky are categorized as zero or first magnitude, while faintest stars visible under dark skies have positive magnitudes.

The brightest star, Sirius has a magnitude of -1.4, the full moon is at -12.7 and the sun counts a magnitude of -26.7. However, Comet McNaught posted a magnitude of -3.0.

Though shining with such high magnitude, its proximity to the sun caused a very short window for viewing.

The comet is also expected to pass through the field of view of the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory ("SOHO")-a spacecraft that was launched in 1995 to study the Sun.