Comet 17/P Holmes

The science blog community has been awash with news about this comet which suddenly increased its magnitude by a factor of some 400,000 making it easily visible with the naked eye. I'm aware that some readers of this blog are not regular science blog readers, so I urge you to go and take a look before it's no longer visible with the naked eye. I took a look this evening in a relatively brightly lit neighbourhood but could clearly make out the extended nature of the comet and although its span is only a tenth or so of the diameter of the moon (my guess) you can still make out that there is a central core and a diffuse region around the outside. So, go and take a look. See here for directions - very easy to make it out close to Cassiopeia.

Lots of information at these sites (more here, and more photos here)