It is strange to think that whilst I will be chomping on
pizza and sipping cider tonight, one of the oldest objects in our solar system
will be hurtling around the sun! The sun-grazing comet will reach perihelion (the
point at which the comet is closest to the sun) this evening at 18.37 UTC/GMT,
and only then will we know if comet ISON has survived the perilous heat of the
sun.
According to NASA,
‘Comet ISON was first spotted 585 million miles away in September 2012’. That is
five hundred and eighty five million miles away. Incredible. And now just over
a year later it is but only 730,000 miles away from the sun. I find it hard to
wrap my head around those figures, that distance and that vast unrelenting space.
Not only will this beautiful cluster of rock and ice look magnificent
against our night sky, it will also if it survives, contribute towards
scientific research; the comet is thought to be 4.6 billion years old. This
means that this untouched, untainted and accessible comet is as old as our world; it could help us get closer to solving those age old questions. Oh what
a cliché we are ... Always searching for that answer and never living in the
moment of ultimately transient beauty.
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