Olwyn Kelly | Contributing Writer
On the 28th of November something amazing is going to happen. The Ison Comet is going to pass through its perihelion (closest point) of the Sun, blazing through the southeastern horizon of the northern hemisphere, making it visible to the naked eye for much of early December.
The last comet of such spectacular proportions, Comet Lovejoy, crossed the skies of the southern hemisphere in 2011 in breathtaking fashion. It is now visible in the early morning just below the Big Dipper (Ursa Major) in the northern hemisphere and is expected to remain above the pre-dawn glow for another week or so.
Since the beginning of civilization, and probably before that as well, humans iishave looked to the night sky for answers and meaning.
Through the study of the night sky, the ancient Babylonians and then Greeks developed the scientific method. Astronomy was, in effect, the first science. Stonehenge was built purely to compute when the stars and planets were aligned for the celebration of the Solstices as astronomy also, conversely, played a major part in many different spiritual rituals and religious practices all over the world. Even today, every time you read your horoscope, you subscribe to the belief that the alignment of various celestial bodies are in some way influencing and explaining your ‘destiny’.
Humans’ insatiable desire to explain and understand drove thousands to devote their lives to the study of what Einstein described as “manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty”.
A comet is an icy body of the Solar System that displays a visible atmosphere and tail when it is affected by solar radiation and solar winds. Through the spectrometric study of the Ison Comet, astrochemists will be able to examine its chemical composition, gathering data that will help unravel the question of the formation of our 4.6 billion year old Solar System. They will also look at its water content and if it posseses precursors to amino acids, the building blocks of life on earth, potentially explaining how life came to be on our planet.
On average, only one comet can be seen without telescopic aid of some sort a year and of those approximately thirty in recorded history have been termed ‘great comets’ meaning that they are bright enough to the causal observer who has not been actively seeking them at all.
The Ison Comet at sunrise last week
In the next three weeks, we are being treated to not one but two of these great comets. Get outside and look up.
