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Your support makes all the difference.Have you seen the comet yet? On a clear night, Comet Hale-Bopp is spectacularly visible to the naked eye in the north-west sky (or in the eastern sky early in the morning, I'm told).
"How far away is it?" wonders my wife; "Light-years?" I set off to see what the Web had to say.
The Journal of the British Astronomical Association site wasn't much help. It's clearly a serious site for serious astronomers; for the journal's paper back-issues it contains a full contents list, abstracts of the main articles, book reviews and files of selected items. But nothing about the comet that I could detect - at least, not within the site. Maybe objects you can see without a telescope don't count for much - but even so it seems astonishing that the comet of the century should not rate a mention.
In sharp contrast is The Astronomer Online, run by The Astronomer - "a magazine for the advanced amateur". The site opens with a picture that shows what you're looking for - and its Comets page has a long section devoted to an account of the Hale-Bopp's development, with countless links from the text-only main page to photographs.
Elsewhere on the plain but informative site there are pages on planets, asteroids, eclipses and so on, each with a selection of relevant links (in addition to a highly selective general links section).
Sky Online is a vigorously commercial site promoting the publications of the American Sky Publishing Corporation, including the monthly Sky and Telescope. Its Weekly News section leads with a helpful piece on the comet, including the information I was looking for: "The comet will be closest to the Earth on 22 March (197 million kilometers)". About 10 light- minutes, by my calculations.
Sky Online's Comets Page contains huge amounts of information, including guidance on "comet photography for everyone" and an interesting profile of Yuji Hyakutake, the 45-year-old Japanese amateur who found the Great Comet of 1996. This is the page to start with if, like me, you're a latent rather than active astronomer.
And if it's astronomy/space-related links you're after, get down to the Sky Online SkyLinks page - a massively impressive collection, thoroughly organised, and covering everything from telescope-making to star charts.
In the course of this exploration, it has dawned on me, as it were, that metropolitan readers may not be able to see this unique spectacle easily, because of light pollution - the crazy amount of radiation we throw up into the sky as a by-product of illuminating the streets. The Campaign for Dark Skies has an excellent site about the problem.
Journal of the British Astronomical Association
http://www.star.ucl.ac.uk/hwm/
The Astronomer Online
http://www.demon.co.uk/astronomer/
Sky Online
http://www.skypub.com/
Campaign for Dark Skies
http://www.u-net.com/ph/cfds/
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