Comet Holmes

[jhacker]

The details are available at www.spaceweather.com, but in a nutshell, this comet is in the constellation Perseus. 11 days ago it was an average comet that required a large telescope (like Hubble not really) but on Oct. 23, it exploded into view. Astronomers said it increased in brightness more than a million times in 24 hours, an unprecidented event. For those of you who know the magnitude scale, it went from Magnitude 17 to Magnitude 4 in 24 hours, (Magnitude 6 is the dimmest object visible in a dark sky with the naked eye, Venus is Mag -2, the lower the number the brighter the object, kinda like the F-stop) then went to Mag 2.5 a couple of days later. Through binoculars (or a 300 mm lens) other stars look like points of light, but Comet Hughes looks like a fuzzball. These are the shots I took this morning about 12:30 a.m.

[jhacker]

Another shot

[Lyrics51]

Jhacker, thanks for the post. I will see if I can't find it tonight.

Glenn