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The coma is the nebulous envelope around the nucleus of a comet, formed when the comet passes near the Sun in its highly elliptical orbit. As the comet warms, parts of it sublimate ; [ 1 ] this gives a comet a diffuse appearance when viewed through telescopes and distinguishes it from stars .
While the solid nucleus of comets is generally less than 30 km across, the coma may be larger than the Sun, and ion tails have been observed to extend 3.8 astronomical units (570 Gm; 350 × 10 ^ 6 mi). [6] The Ulysses spacecraft made an unexpected pass through the tail of the comet C/2006 P1 (Comet McNaught), on February 3, 2007. [7]
The presence of the comet was confirmed by T. Cragg and R. H. McNaught. They estimated visually that the comet had an apparent magnitude of 10.2 and a coma 6 arcminutes across. [1] Upon discovery the comet was located in the constellation of Sculptor, at a solar elongation of 60°, and was located 1.62 AU from the Sun. [4]
A comet is an icy, small Solar System body that warms and begins to release gases when passing close to the Sun, a process called outgassing.This produces an extended, gravitationally unbound atmosphere or coma surrounding the nucleus, and sometimes a tail of gas and dust gas blown out from the coma.
Oct. 15-19: (Comet) may produce an anti-tail — a bright streak that appears to be pointing toward the Sun, opposite the other tails. Oct. 20-31: Comet will be visible with binoculars and telescopes.
French astronomer Alphonse Borrelly was the first person to discover the comet on the early morning of 24 July 1900, while William Robert Brooks independently spotted the same comet about 15 minutes later. [4] They reported the comet as a 9th-magnitude object with a short tail located within the constellation Aries.
A minor outburst took place on 6 February, which was also observed in infrared. The comet was last observed on 4 May 1970. [6] C/1969 T1 was the very first comet observed by Alan Hale (who later became the co-discoverer of Comet Hale-Bopp), at the time the comet faded as a 5th-magnitude object on February 2, 1970. [8]
The comet rapidly brightened as it slowly approached the Earth, and was closest at 0.757 AU (113.2 million km) on 2 August 1907. [4] Edward E. Barnard made a series of photographic observations of the comet between 11 July and 8 September 1907, where he described the comet being visible to the naked eye for two months. [ 5 ]