On Wednesday, a normally-faint comet named P17/Holmes, which never gets closer to the Sun than more than twice the Earth's distance underwent an outburst which resulted in it becoming nearly a million times brighter than it had been a few hours before. It is an easy naked-eye object, even from town and even with the Moon being not too far away, looking like a yellowish star to the naked eye. In binoculars it is clearly too large and fuzzy to be a star. From anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere, it comes up in the NE at dusk and will be nearly overhead after midnight, setting in the NE about dawn. (Sorry, if you're very far south of the equator, you are out of luck.) Here are a couple of links which include finder charts:
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/home/10775326.html <http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/home/10775326.html> http://www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx?c=a&id=6157 <http://www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx?c=a&id=6157> Hope your skies are clear: tonight was my first opportunity to see it. -- Ronn! :) _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
