Quote:
Originally Posted by Rob_K
Just a bit of rough maths from the 39-odd degrees of tail detectable on 20 Jan:
Earth was 0.984 AU from Sun, comet 'head' was 1.17 AU from Sun & 0.616 AU from Earth at the time. Using an assumption that the tail points directly away from the Sun (probably a reasonable assumption given its extreme straightness and the fact that the comet is a sungrazer), then the detectable tail length was about 1.24 AU or 185 million kilometres! It would only take an extra degree or two of tail length to become detectable over the next few days and the length would be around 200 million kilometres.
Cheers -
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... hard to comprehend, many thanks Rob.
