One night out stargazing

By David Hill In Inbox

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28th January, 2012
Comet Lovejoy glowed in our pre-dawn skies as the year started. Nobody had expected the 400m-diameter dirty snowball to make it. When first observed, it was on a Sun-grazing trajectory. Experts thought it would evaporate, disappear forever. Instead, and against all odds, it not merely survived, but returned to bathe us in the effulgence of its presence. It really should have been called Comet Winston. I’m a minor light in our local astronomical society: a sort of beige dwarf. I did earn a certain infamy a few years back by pointing out to some visitors who dropped in at our observatory ...

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