Many of you are probably aware of the arrival of Comet McNaught. Here's a shot of the comet at sunset in Seattle on Thursday January 11th, taken from my office with my crappy digital camera:
(Also note the view, and understand why I am not in danger of taking up residence in California with the rest of the CV crowd anytime soon.) The comet is to the left of the street light, about 1/3 of the way from the right of the image, as you can see in this close-up:
It's a stubby sort of comet, and not particularly dramatic compared to Comet Hyakutake
, whose tail stretched a significant fraction of the way across the sky
. I was at an observatory in Chile when that one was up, with nice dark skies. Absolutely spectacular. While Comet McNaught is not much to look at in my crappy digital photo, ...
