Suddenly erupting comet visible to naked eye
BEIJING, Nov. 6 (Xinhuanet) -- A comet unexpectedly exploded and brightened in the last couple of weeks, becoming a dramatic presence in the night sky, media reported Monday.
Comet Holmes, which appears in the northeastern sky as a yellowish fuzzy ball, can be seen by the naked eye, even in cities that pollute the night sky with light.
"This is a once-in-a-lifetime event to witness, along the lines of when Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 smashed into Jupiter back in 1994," said Paul Lewis, director of astronomy outreach at the University of Tennessee.
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Comet grows larger than the sun
The sun is no longer the largest object in our solar system. At least for a while anyway. Comet 17P/Holmes suddenly exploded on October 23, making it a million times brighter within a few hours and causing its gas and dust cloud to expand until it was measured at 0.9 million miles across by November 9 by Rachel Stevenson, Jan Kleyna and Pedro Lacerda of the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy. And it's still growing. The sun's diameter is about 864,900 miles.
The comet should begin to shrink back to a more normal size in the near future. The nucleus of comet 17P/Holmes is made of ice and rock and is just 2.3 miles in diameter. Astronomers theorize that a large chunk of the comet broke off and disintegrated into tiny dust particles.
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