John Oldshue and a number of our readers pointed this out to me during the last 24 hours… here is some information from Space.com:
Skywatchers throughout the Northern Hemisphere report the newly visible Comet Holmes is a remarkable sight even under city lights. The comet, described in glowing terms by many observers, should continue to be visible to the naked eye for at least the next few weeks.
Only a couple comets each decade are this easy to see.
Holmes is actually an old comet. First seen in November 1892 by British observer Edwin Holmes, it has since made 16 circuits around the Sun and should have fizzled out a long time ago. It made its closest approach to the Sun last May, yet never came closer to it than 191 million miles (307 million kilometers). The comet is actually moving away from the sun now, almost midway between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Not exactly a recipe for an outbust, since solar heating is typically what triggers comets to brighten.
But sometime late last Tuesday, Oct. 23, this comet underwent an explosive outburst and within just 24-hours increased its brightness almost a million-fold. Since then, Holmes has been putting on a unique display, looking very different than any other comet of our generation: It has yet to sprout a noticeable tail, while its head—called the coma—appears like a round, yellowish fuzz ball in the constellation Perseus, and is visible for most of the night.
Since its outburst, Holmes has shone almost consistently between magnitudes 2 and 3, making it similar in brightness to the stars that make up the famous Big Dipper. (On this astronomer’s scale, smaller numbers represent brighter objects.)
