Comet 17P/Holmes (Oct 27, 2007)

Here's a photo of Comet 17P/Holmes I took from my front deck using a 130mm f5.7 Newtonian reflector. The photo was taken at 11:51pm Saturday evening. The comet was very faint on Wednesday at 17th magnitude. By Friday early morning, it had suddenly jumped in brightness to magnitude 2.5. Since each magnitude is about 2.5 times brighter than the next, that represents a jump in brightness of about a million fold. The comet doesn't have a tail yet, presumably because it's still rather far from the Sun (somewhere between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter in distance from the Sun), and it's tail, if any, is aimed roughly directly away from Earth. In the photo, you can see the coma rather distinctly in the center, while a bright flair is visible to the lower left. The comet is in Perseus, just to the northeast of alpha-Perseus and closer to lambda-Per. It's certainly visible to the naked eye, but it looks just like a star. A pair of binoculars will resolve it to the fuzzball splotch that it really is. For more detailed information on finding it yourself, take a look at: http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/home/10775326.html