Comet C/1956 R1 (Arend - Roland)

This bright comet of 1957 , C/1956 Arend / Roland, was discovered by Sylvain Arend and Georges Roland on photographic plates taken on September 14th but not checked until November 8th at the Uccle observatory , Belgium, during their search for asteroids.
On the plates the comet was a healthy magnitude 10 with a strong central region and short tail.
Michael P.Candy determined the orbital elements and gave a perihelion date for the comet at April 8th,1957.
Indications were good for a prominent display for the northern hemisphere even though the comet was still over 2.5 A.U from the sun and 1.7 A.U from earth respectively.
The comet was in Pisces until February 1957, when magnitude estimates ranged between 7.5 and 8 with a tail 8' in length. By February 22/23 , the tail was 1 degree long and comet was nearing 7th magnitude.
After February 27th, the comet was in conjunction with the sun and wasn't recovered until April 2nd by J.G.Gow (Tapui, NZ) in the morning sky and near magnitude 2 with a tail between 3-5 degrees long.
Perihelion duely arrived on 8th April at a distance of 0.32 AU from the sun, and the comet continued to brighten as it approached perigee with earth.
The first 2 weeks of April saw only southern hemisphere observations and a magnitude of 1 was noted on the 14th.
Approach with earth came on April 20th, and you can see from the orbit diagram that the comet approached down to 0.57 AU from earth and magnitude was in the region of -0.5/ -1 and a few days later the dust tail was between 25° and 30° as can be seen from the conventional photograph. 
The most notable feature of this comets apparition then began to grow shortly after this time, the very obvious anti-tail.
The negative image beautifully details this phenomena. The tail at its peak was 15° in length and remained visible until May 2nd.
Suspicion has it that the comet had a dust outburst event at the time of its recovery on April 2nd , and that the anti-tail was created by dust released between February 6th and March 1st.
The comet began to fade as May came with a magnitude of 6 being recorded on the 18th and by June 3rd was around 8th magnitude.
The comet was followed until 11th April, 1958 when the magnitude was +21.
Unsurprisingly, the comet is on an hyperbolic ejection trajectory, even after leaving the planetary realm in 1977 the eccentricity of the orbit remains at 1.000199.
As of this date, the comet resides at a distance from earth of 84.433 AU.

Neil Norman, Ipswich, England.

Page of comet: http://195.209.248.207/en/observation/listObserv/1183

Orbit of comet: http://195.209.248.207/en/observation/orbit/1183