Comet Holmes 17 /P.

Unless you live in a place with pretty severe light-pollution or in a cloudy globally warmed climate -- you can see this comet with your naked eye. If you need glasses, keep them on -- and let your naked eye wander down the Milky Way from Cassiopeia's "W" toward the bright Capella. About half-way between Cassiopeia and Auriga's bright Capella, near the brighter stars in Perseus at least for the next several nights you can spot Comet Holmes. It will still be in this vicinity for a while, but could "fade to black" for small telescopes or binoculars in a short time.

1-December 2007. Okay. Tonight I am intermittently, well, mostly socked-in with wind, rain, and snow. But I just spotted comet Holmes as I walked in toward the house after some late chores. The southwest wind blew in a lot of moisture, rare for this time of year, at above 7500 feet. So it really warmed up and it is as muddy as late spring warming. The Comet is amazing! I saw it's blob tonight through a gap in the clouds that opened and blew by. I am amazed to find that the blob is still quite prominent, still much brighter than M-31, the Andromeda Galaxy, and easily visible! If you have clear darkish skies go see it. It is still easily third magnitude and is as the orbital position plot shows quite a ways now from Mirfak. I'd estimate at most 2-1/4 degrees and as early as I looked tonight "above", toward the zenith, from Mirfak. I am surprised it is still visible! Take advantage of it! Best through binoculars but still much brighter than the big Andromeda Galaxy. Has anyone spotted the nucleus at the heart of the blob in the last few days? I'll look online a few places. Amazing!

Sky and Telescope has several solid articles and many links.

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/11372856.html

It could outburst again, so it bears watching. It is fading(11-20-2007) the moon interferes with it in binoculars after my local midnight. It does not look like this now!

Image: Wikipedia
Photo of Comet_Holmes, with permission by author John Lanoue, at www.bedfordnights.com

It will look like this photo minus the distinct colors. To the naked eye, smaller, but this is impressive through binoculars or small telescope. Oh. You won't see the nucleus of the comet through the binoculars! But!!!!

It is impressive if things in the sky can impress you. It looks like a blob, as a blurry, fuzzy round spot, about 70% as large as the angular diameter of the moon in the sky. What you see of it is larger than the orbit of the moon around the Earth. . I've been observing it haphazardly since I heard it erupted into naked eyed visibility. Now my eyes are old. However on the 10th and the 11th of November just after dark, it seemed at least magnitude 2.0. Tonight, it is a little more diffuse maybe larger and perhaps 2.2 magnitude -- still a far cry from it's usual magnitude of 16 or 17 -- fainter than Pluto at mag 14 point something.

Whatever Holmes out-gassed in this eruption -- it made the object that you can see -- about 1,000,000 times brighter than normal. Through some 10 x 50 Celestron Binoculars, this object is absolutely impressive. It is like a ghost, and maybe the same color as one those haunters describe.

When this normally very faint comet "erupted" it became the second largest apparition in the sky. It can't last. Take advantage of this opportunity, and take some binoculars with you. Really, if you think about what you are seeing -- this is remarkable!

The orbital elements are at here:
http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/iau/Ephemerides/Comets/0017P.html

Image: Wikipedia

Where it is with respect to other objects. Currently it never gets as close to the Sun as Mars!

Image: Wikipedia

I will be watching Holmes as long as I can see it with binoculars. Then I might observe it for a while with my other scopes. It will be visible for quite awhile -- at least til this outburst dissipates itself to surrounding space, and the Sun's wind blows the ghost away. The comet will be there but it is normally faint. Jupiter keeps hacking up its orbit so for a long species time, it bears watching!

Image: Wikipedia, from Tomruen

UPDATE 11-16-2007

About 6:30 local, I grabbed my binoculars and went outside. Three of the Dogs had gotten out. I had been in Denver 3 days and had cataract surgery in my left eye. I might write a byte on that later. But my new eye lens is not quite as sharp as it used to be. But 36 hours after the knife and the acrylic insertion it is pretty good optically. It is now better than 20-20, but It is sore and there is an air bubble in the lens-cavity that the body will absorb in a day or three or a week.

Comet Holmes

The comet now is about magnitude 2.7 or so , and if you hide from the waxing moon it is diffuse and expanding so that through the 10x50's it's angular diameter through binocular is larger than 30 minutes (Larger than 1/2 a degree) The Moon appears to be about a half a degree, and the Sun too. (That is they subtend about 30 minutes of arc in the sky.) Comet Holmes is 1.6 Astronomical units away from us which makes it quite a bit larger in angular physical dimension that the Sun or anything else in the solar system but it is a ghost; what you see weighs very little. The Sun is roughly 865,000 miles in diameter.

1.6/1 = X/865,000 miles

X = 1.6 x 865,000 miles = 1,384,000 miles

It is a bit larger than that, likely over 1.5 million miles in diameter. How did I estimate it larger than 30 minutes. Really roughly. I compared the size of the moon in the binoculars with the size of the comet. The comet is slightly larger.

Tomorrow some part of the blob should pass in front of Mirfak, the yellow-white brightest star in Perseus. I am sure the pros with the equipment will be obtaining spectra to see what frequencies are being absorbed by Comet Holmes of Mirfak's light.

Just in, 11-17-07. 7:15pm local.

Holmes still visible naked eye, but quite diffuse. Moon at first quarter is not near the problem most people have. Even though I complain of the aerosols and dust, I have very dark skies.

I thought Holmes ghostly diffuse blob would be a little closer to Mirfak than it is, but it appears through the binoculars that only the very outer part of the diffusing blob reaches and intercepts light from the star. Since I am using 10 x 50's I know the apparition would be larger in a telescope of even 3 inches. (Yeah, I'm just too much enjoying the naked eye and small lens view to drag out the bigger scopes.)

This link will take you to JPL and you can see the orbit! with respect to the rest of the solar system , but you can advance or go to the past with the Java Applet. Give the applet and JPL site time to load. You can play with the future or past trajectory. I ran it forward to its next close major orbit changing encounter with Jupiter in December of 2050. Note the very comprehensive data available below the animation!

http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=holmes;orb=1;cov=0;log=0#orb

You need to Google Holmes 17/P and see what others are saying about this remarkable object. And look, most of what IS -- is OUT THERE . . .take a look.

Okay also see NASA's Hubble page on Comet Holmes.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/news/hubble-holmes.html

Also there is some science to be done in X-Ray and Chandra committed 8 hours and the observations were made Nov 1, 2007.

There are some x-rays!

Note that Scott Wolk calls it charge exchange.

I look forward to the images once posted at Chandra's site.

Read here:
http://chandra.harvard.edu/blog/

Dr Scott Wolk's blog is a kick!