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11/03/2013
Queen's Discovered Comet To Appear In Night Sky
A comet which was discovered by a team at Queen’s University Belfast will be visible from tomorrow evening (12 March).
Comet PANSTARRS was discovered in Hawaii in June 2011 by a team which included astronomers from the Astrophysics Research Centre at Queen’s, using the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope.
The comet was 1.2bn kilometres from the sun when it was discovered.
It will be visible by eye, low-down in the Western sky in the UK and Ireland from roughly 18:45 onwards.
Queen's University says people should be able to see the comet with its faint tails pointing away from the Sun for at least half an hour.
Dr Pedro Lacerda, the Michael West Research Fellow in Queen’s Astrophysics Research Centre, said: "The coma at the head of the comet should be visible to the naked eye but to see the tail may require the use of binoculars. The most visible features will be its tail and bright coma. Those features originate in the nucleus of a comet, a solid lump of dirty ice which, heated by sunlight, sublimates and feeds the diffuse cloud of gas and dust that gives the comet its fuzzy appearance - the coma. Then, light and other particles from the sun push part of the coma away from the nucleus to form the tail which gives comets their spectacular appearance."
"Comets are important as frozen relics of the formation of our solar system. Before plunging into the inner solar system they spend most of their lives beyond Neptune at temperatures below negative 220 C. For that reason comets retain ices of the ingredients that were present when the planets were born and that are long gone from the surfaces of the much warmer asteroids, for example."
The comet will be brightest in March, but as it moves away from the sun and Earth, it will become too faint to see by eye by late March or early April.
It will then disappear into space, not returning for many thousands of years.
Comet PANSTARRS was discovered in Hawaii in June 2011 by a team which included astronomers from the Astrophysics Research Centre at Queen’s, using the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope.
The comet was 1.2bn kilometres from the sun when it was discovered.
It will be visible by eye, low-down in the Western sky in the UK and Ireland from roughly 18:45 onwards.
Queen's University says people should be able to see the comet with its faint tails pointing away from the Sun for at least half an hour.
Dr Pedro Lacerda, the Michael West Research Fellow in Queen’s Astrophysics Research Centre, said: "The coma at the head of the comet should be visible to the naked eye but to see the tail may require the use of binoculars. The most visible features will be its tail and bright coma. Those features originate in the nucleus of a comet, a solid lump of dirty ice which, heated by sunlight, sublimates and feeds the diffuse cloud of gas and dust that gives the comet its fuzzy appearance - the coma. Then, light and other particles from the sun push part of the coma away from the nucleus to form the tail which gives comets their spectacular appearance."
"Comets are important as frozen relics of the formation of our solar system. Before plunging into the inner solar system they spend most of their lives beyond Neptune at temperatures below negative 220 C. For that reason comets retain ices of the ingredients that were present when the planets were born and that are long gone from the surfaces of the much warmer asteroids, for example."
The comet will be brightest in March, but as it moves away from the sun and Earth, it will become too faint to see by eye by late March or early April.
It will then disappear into space, not returning for many thousands of years.
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Northern Ireland WeatherToday:A largely cloudy day with occasional rain. Turning drier and brighter for a time in the afternoon and feeling very mild. Light southerly winds becoming strong with gales later along the County Down coast. Maximum temperature 13 °C.Tonight:Cloudy with outbreaks of rain, these heavy at times. Strong southerly winds, with gales in the evening across eastern counties, becoming westerly later. Minimum temperature 8 °C.
