A comet that has engaged skywatchers worldwide with its sudden outburst has had one disappointing aspect: no tail. Comet Holmes brightened suddenly and dramatically last week, going from total obscurity to naked-eye brightness that rivalled some of the brighter stars in the sky. But without a tail, the gas and dust ejected by the comet left it looking like no more than a fuzzy tennis ball through backyard telescopes.
I spent a whole day on processing the thousands image that the Lulin Ritchey-Chretien taken on Oct. 25/26. Finally the result is out. But I dont get much happier Huan said he has found a way to find out what cause the outburst well, I must do something on this, too. Now I plan to join the CARA project to measure the dust production rate of Comet Holmes. Tomorrows mission Read more
It is one of the strangest things to illuminate the night sky and may be about to make history. Comet Holmes - a ball of frozen matter that orbits the sun every seven years - has intensified in brightness one million times since Wednesday night. It is now visible with the naked eye, even from well-lit city areas. What the comet will do next is anyone's guess. If the brightness continues at this rate, Comet Holmes will soon become the brightest comet in history.
A comet became a million times brighter practically overnight earlier this week, confusing some astronomers into thinking theyd spotted a new star. Between 23 and 25 October, comet 17P Holmes mysteriously went from a brightness of magnitude 17, which is 25,000 times too dim to be seen by the naked eye, to a brightness of 2 on this logarithmic scale, that's a brightening of a million times as seen from Earth. The comet is now easy to spot; it looks to the naked eye like a fuzzy yellow star.
A distant comet that was as faint as magnitude 18 on October 20th has suddenly brightened by a million fold, altering the naked-eye appearance of the constellation Perseus. This startling outburst of Comet Holmes (17P) may be even stronger than the one that occurred 115 years ago, in November 1892, when the comet was first spotted by English amateur Edwin Holmes.