Season's Greetings

31 December 2007

A Happy New Year!

The Great Comet McNaught put an impressive show in January 2007 as seen in this image taken from the ESO La Silla Observatory. The comet displays a vivid coma and a lovely, sweeping tail. The structure in the tail is probably the fingerprint of past bursts of activity of the comet, releasing small dust particles whose paths are deflected by the solar light.
Photo by Hans Herman Heyer (ESO).