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RODNEY Austin, an amateur astronomer in New Zealand, stands by the reflector
telescope which he used to discover the comet that now bears his name late
last year. Comet Austin, like all comets, is becoming brighter as it nears
the Sun. The heat is boiling off the ice of its tiny nucleus – a body perhaps
10 kilometres across – while the solar wind drives the vapour hundreds of
thousands of kilometres across space. The comet will be visible in the eastern
sky just before sunrise every day for the next few weeks.