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Now the weather has finally cleared, I've just been outside for a squizz at Comet McNaught, the brightest comet visible for decades. It didn't look as impressive as Comets Halley or Hale-Bopp... but those I saw in a dark sky, out in the Northumbrian countryside^*, with no other lights around, and no urban glare. This was in a sky not yet fully night, and fighting against all the lights of London.

If you have a chance, go and have gander, between sunset and nightfall. It's on the western horizon, down and right from Venus—the only other object in the evening sky brighter than it.

* In the latter case, it was whilst driving back from Newcastle to Edinburgh; in the former, with my father on a comet-photographing trip: to his surprise, his photos managed to capture the comet's gas tail, fainter and pointing in a different direction to the naked-eye-visible dust tail.

Notes from Limmud 2006: The History of the Siddur

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