What might be the brightest comet in decades will be visible with the naked eye in the northern sky during the next two weeks -- if the weather is agreeable.
Comet Hyakutake, which can be seen near the North Star any hour of a clear night, looks like a fuzzy star with a faint tail smeared across the night sky.
The comet, which was discovered earlier this year by an amateur astronomer in Japan, is about 10 million miles from earth, according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab.
Astronomy Professor Gary Wegner said the comet, which only comes near the earth every 25,000 years, has been visible with the naked eye the past few days.
"It is probably one of the best ones I have seen," he said. "I have been seeing comets clear back to '57. It is probably the most spectacular that has been around."
Andy Williams, the secretary of the Stargazers club at the College and manager of Kiewit's Computer Resource Center, said clouds prevented him from seeing the comet at its brightest point Sunday night. But, he said, he was able to see it during the weekend when he was in Maine.
"I was incredibly impressed I could see it with the naked eye," he said.
Even though the comet already reached its brightest point, "it won't dim too quickly," Williams said. "For the next couple nights it should be impressive to see."
Williams said finding the comet is "extremely easy."
"If you look up near the Big Dipper, you can't help but see it," he said. "It is a fuzzy patch ... It looks like a cottonball at 20 feet."
"You don't need a telescope. It stands out," Wegner said. But "a pair of binoculars will help you see it better."
"If it is clear Tuesday night, it should be a great night to see it," Williams said.
Tuesday night is expected to be clear and cold, according to the National Weather Service. Most nights this week should be good for viewing the comet, since the forecast calls for continued clear nights.
A Stargazers BlitzMail bulletin stated that students can observe the comet using the observatory's telescope between 10:30 and 11:30 p.m. most nights this week.
But Williams said a telescope might not be the best way to view the comet.
"It'll look a hell of a lot better through binoculars," he said. "Go out to the golf course or someplace where it is really dark. Hanover has these dreadful sodium lights, and if you can get away it is better."
"Get a place where it is dark and where you can look north," Wegner said.
An impressive feature of this comet is its enormous tail, according to Wegner.
"People said it was 20 to 30 degrees long," he said.
The comet is moving toward the sun along an elliptical orbit. It will no longer be visible in the northern hemisphere after May 1 when it will begin moving away from the sun, according to the New York Times.
Wegner said Comet Hyakutake is so bright because "it is relatively near us. We are in a good place to see it."
It is better to look for the comet sooner than later, because it will become harder to see as the moon waxes, Williams said.
Wegner said the comet is probably an oddly shaped ball of ice 10 to 20 miles in diameter, composed of raw material left over from the formation of the solar system.
"It is like a dirty snowball: water ice and other ices mixed in with dust grains," he said. "When it comes close to the sun like it is now, it melts."
"The dust reflects sunlight, and other material in the comet interacts with solar radiation and begins to fluoresce," he said.
The comet "goes way beyond where the planets go. It has a very elongated orbit," he said.
Another good night for viewing the comet may be April 3, when the full moon will plunge into the earth's shadow in a total lunar eclipse.
"The moon will be very, very dark or blood-red," Williams said. "The moon rises in full eclipse and it begins to end at 7:51 p.m."
"The darker the sky, the brighter the comet," he said.
Even if the comet is faint, April 3 will still be a fantastic night for stargazing, Williams said.
"They will see one hell of an eclipse," he said. "A blood-red moon is a hell of a thing to see."
Williams speculated that the combination of a bright comet and a lunar eclipse might be perceived as a bad omen in earlier times.
"In northern New England it probably would have meant a few people being burned for being witches," he said.
