alienation news

Comet Could Brighten Night Skies Next Spring

Most comets would be completely invisible at great distance, even to the telescopes that found them, so the implication is that the recently discovered Comet NEAT C/2001 Q4 may be an unusually large and active object.
On Aug. 28, 2001, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) announced the discovery of a new comet spotted by Near Earth Asteroid Tracking team at Palomar Observatory in southern California. Like several other comets, this one has come to be called NEAT, the acronym for the discovery program.
The comet was nearly a billion miles (1.6 billion kilometers) from the Sun when it was discovered. At that time it was shining at magnitude 20, or more than 398,000 times dimmer than the faintest star visible to the unaided eye.
On Oct. 29, 2002, The IAU announced the discovery by the LINEAR survey of a comet that may also become a bright naked-eye object in May 2004.