Kale
Oct 30th, 2007, 08:29:59 PM
If the sky is clear and you're in the Northern Hemisphere, you should be able to see Comet Holmes just a few degrees down from the constellation Cassiopeia. This comet has a roughly circular orbit between Jupiter and Mars, well outside the range where solar radiation usually blows off enough particulate matter to make a visible dust tail. But about a week ago, Holmes began sloughing off large quantities of dust and unexpectedly became about a million times brighter than normal, putting it around an apparent magnitude of 2.
It's brighter than most of the stars in the sky, but because the dust has spread out into a sort of halo, it appears as a fuzzy blob rather than a point of light, and once you pick it out of the sky it's very easy to tell the difference. Look at it through a pair of binoculars and you'll see a sort of glowing cloud.
This isn't as spectacular a comet as Hale-Bopp or Hyakatuke, but visible comets are a rare enough occurrence that it's always worth going out for a look! And this one is easy to spot. Currently, it's just to the left of Perseus. Find the W-shape of Cassiopeia and look down to a small triangle-shape of three similarly bright objects - the one on the bottom-left is Holmes.
http://weblogs.marylandweather.com/2007/10/new_images_of_comet_holmes.html
It's brighter than most of the stars in the sky, but because the dust has spread out into a sort of halo, it appears as a fuzzy blob rather than a point of light, and once you pick it out of the sky it's very easy to tell the difference. Look at it through a pair of binoculars and you'll see a sort of glowing cloud.
This isn't as spectacular a comet as Hale-Bopp or Hyakatuke, but visible comets are a rare enough occurrence that it's always worth going out for a look! And this one is easy to spot. Currently, it's just to the left of Perseus. Find the W-shape of Cassiopeia and look down to a small triangle-shape of three similarly bright objects - the one on the bottom-left is Holmes.
http://weblogs.marylandweather.com/2007/10/new_images_of_comet_holmes.html