From Dr Andy McCrea MBE in Northern Ireland comes this spectacular shot of that little interloper Comet Lovejoy now leaving our southern skies for a spell up north.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
We have a great affinity, this very clever astronomy specialist and myself. Andy and Shirley live at Bangor close to Belfast.
Both his grandfathers worked on the construction of the “unsinkable” passenger liner Titanic.
On its maiden voyage it struck an iceberg and went down with a loss of some 1500 passengers and crew.
Co-incidentally on the date of my birth – April 14 – the Titanic tragically hit the iceberg.
A transferred junior officer had taken the key with him when he left the ship in France. The key was to the binocular cupboard in the crow's nest so the lookouts did not have the aid of that instrument. Perhaps, just perhaps, the binoculars may have saved the ship.
Andy's picture of Comet Lovejoy sparkles with detail of this interloper from the Oort Cloud that region of left over remnants of the formation of our solar system.
It left there some 11,500 years ago falling inexorably into the Sun. It will spin around the Sun and then be thrown back out into deep space to return some 8000 years hence.
The Pleiades in the same field are known as the Seven Sisters by disparate cultures across the world. Australian aborigines recount the story of little Lowanna taken by the spirit man and dragged to his home in the sky pursued by the angry sisters who had been given the power of flight.
The Pleiades are north of Maitland tonight at 9.30pm and the in binoculars the comet is Northwest of the Pleiades about a hands span.
It was Christmas Eve 46 years ago when men from Earth orbiting the moon in Apollo 8 became the first humans to see this apparition.
Those of us who lived through this era were hardly aware that mankind’s slow and steady advance into this space odyssey was occurring.
It must be one of the greatest photographs ever taken.
A remastered video on YouTube shows the occasion as the orbiter rounded the moon.
And on that December 24th of 1968 Frank Borman, Will Anders and Jim Lovell experienced one of the most amazing moments in history.
This photograph has appeared on the cover of Time magazine, on the face of stamps and is enshrined in the Space Museum in Washington.
NASA have now released this video to see that precious moment in history that seems so long ago.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/dE-vOscpiNc