These travelling masses of ice and dust galloping throughout the universe are believed to have shaped the course of life on this planet. As a result of comet-hunting, many deep-sky objects including nebulae and galaxies have been discovered with perhaps the most obvious collection being the 109 (or 110) DSO's attributed to Charles Messier. With over 1000 comets now having been catalogued and approximately 200 having been established as being periodic, historical records suggest comets to have been observed and documented as far back as 240 BC (Comet Halley by the Chinese).

Comets are appealing to amateurs for a variety of reasons: they lead to incredible photographs thanks to their glowing and colourful tails extending millions of kilometers as they approach the sun and the ice and various frozen gases in the nucleus begin to vaporize; they are the precursors of meteor showers as remnants left behind on prior visits are encountered by our planet while we orbit the sun; and they represent an active adventure and form the basis of a "culture" (comet hunters) based on the discovery of new comets during the early dawn hours on the eastern horizon or just after sunset on the western horizon.

Note: Comet 260/P McNaught illustrated below while passing through southern Andromeda and just north of Triangulum was discovered on May 20, 2005 by Australian astronomer Robert McNaught using the facilities of the Siding Spring Observatory. The comet currently lies 88.1 million km from earth and is just post-perihelion which occurred on September 12, 2012. With a period of 7.083 years, 260/P McNaught previously visited the inner solar system in July, 2005 when it was assigned the temporary designation P/2005 K3. The comet's trajectory includes a range from 1.501 AU at perihelion to 5.875 AU at aphelion while its perigee is 0.586 AU.

For an ephemeris and orbital elements for 260/P McNaught from Harvard's Minor Planet Center, click here. For a simulation of the comet including various orbital elements and physical parameters, click here.

Note: Seventy-four one-minute subs were captured just after the end of astro twilight for this quick-moving visitor to the inner solar system. Every second integration was used to prepare the time series below following alignment of the individual images on the comet's nucleus. Although the comet was at relatively low altitude, very good seeing helped in the final quality of the individual exposures and final result. The second image below is at 100% resolution (simply cropped).