Okay, I confess. It orbits the sun every seven years and has looped around the sun 16 times since its discovery in 1892. But, after 30+ years of stargazing, I’d never heard of Comet Holmes. That is, I hadn’t until a dramatic outburst increased the comet’s brightness by over a million times on October 24. Now … wow!
This comet has become an amazing sight, even in urban skies. The comet is easily visible to the eye alone. I spotted it easily both Friday and Saturday nights this weekend while walking in downtown Austin, Texas, a city of nearly one million inhabitants. How can you recognize it? Unlike some comets, Comet Holmes doesn’t have a tail. It’s a round fuzzball of a comet … distinctly not a star. It’s in the northeast in the evening and, as long as you’re in the northern hemisphere, it’s visible somewhere in the northern sky throughout the night. Just look! Look for the round fuzzy object that doesn’t look like a star.
For more detailed instructions on how to spot it, check out this article: A Halloween comet and a ghoul star.
I’m pretty sure that if I showed this comet to my 24-year-old daughter, Joni, she’d be unimpressed. No long, dramatic comet tail. No explosions. No real-time brightness surges, optimally with sound effects … whaaaaooo, whaaaoooo …
Nothing but a silent fuzzball, bright enough to see in city skies.
And yet to me - maybe to all of us who watch this skies - this is a wonderful event. The sky changes with the seasons, the planets brighten and dim, the moon waxes and wanes on its monthly journey across the heavens. The sky is ever-new to me, but there’s also something changeless about it, a sameness, a familiarity, like an old friend. So when something like this happens - a comet visible to the eye where no comet was before - it tugs at the heart.
People who watch the skies with telescopes see comets all year long. We who watch with just our eyes see them come and go in our skies, with years in between naked-eye comets. Our ancestors saw comets as omens. We know them as mysterious visitors from the deep freeze of the outer solar system, and we send our spacecraft to land on them and probe their icy surfaces. We know they become visible to us only when they swing in toward the sun - some every few years, some only once in thousands of years - and that the characteristic comet tail comes from ices and dust boiling off their fragile surfaces as they draw near the sun.
Most comets are faint. I don’t recall a comet like Holmes that has brightened so much, so fast. Comets tend to brighten gradually as they draw near the sun that binds us and them in orbit. On this return trip near the sun, Comet Holmes had been watched by astronomers with telescopes since July of 2007. Then, on October 24, it just went pop into easy visibility. Now you don’t see it. Now you do.
Don’t miss this one.
Photo credit: Joe Zajac and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
A Halloween comet and a ghoul star
Comet reports and images from the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
Comet reports and images from Spaceweather.com
17PHolmes from Gary Kronk, comet expert.
its possible global warming will cause the cyanide we know exists in comets to rain down on us (inside joke if you read history) also steven colbert is the most trusted authority in news(inside joke if you understand comedy about most of society(under 12 years old i hope)
Can comet Holmes be seen in the southern hemisphere IE From NewZealands northern sky?
Nicholas, I checked, thinking Comet Holmes might make a tiny arc above your northern horizon. But it’s pretty tough. If you’re in northern New Zealand, it does appear briefly in the middle of the night … but it’s probably too low in the sky to see. From southern New Zealand, it doesn’t get above the horizon.
Elsewhere in the southern hemisphere, you MIGHT be able to see the comet … but whether you can or not will depend on how close you are to the equator. The closer the better.
This comet is in the northern sky …
Best to all,
Deborah