Whats next for Comet McNaught?
Viewers in the Southern Hemisphere will now have Comet McNaught pretty much all to themselves in the days ahead. It should continue to be a striking object in the west-southwest sky as darkness falls. If a parallel can drawn between Comet McNaught and any of the above-mentioned comets, it’s that it should gradually fade as it moves away from both the Earth and Sun. As we have previously noted, new comets can be notoriously unpredictable to forecast, but it appears now that McNaught should be shining somewhere between magnitude 0 and 2 on Jan. 21, then fade to perhaps magnitude 5 by the end of January or early February. Although the comet is fading as it moves higher into the sky and sets progressively later, its tail should appear to impressively lengthen. Amazingly, the end of the tail (called the “terminus”) has been glimpsed as far north as Colorado; the multiple streamers protruding above the southwest horizon resemble faint auroral rays in binoculars. It should, in fact, appear at
