- Two comets flying in tandem through space?
Believe it. Andrew Catsaitis of Mangrove Mountain, Australia, photographed
the pair on May 31st.
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- "What a spectacular sight,"
he says. Actually, we've seen these comets before. They're the biggest
fragments of 73P/Schwassmann Wachmann 3, the famous crumbling comet that
passed by Earth in mid-May. Comet 73P disppeared into the glare of the
sun in late May, and now it's emerging again in southern skies--ideally
placed for observers in, e.g., Australia and New Zealand.
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- The comet's main fragments (73P-B and
C) are too dim to see with the naked eye, but they are easy targets for
backyard telescopes. Look for them in the constellation Cetus (the Whale),
which rises in the east a few hours before austral dawn.
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- http://spaceweather.com/
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