On the 24th October 2007 the periodic Comet Holmes (17P) brightened by nearly a million times to become visible to the naked-eye having previously been a faint 17th magnitude object only visible in large telescopes. This is similar to the outburst that led to the discovery of the comet by the English amateur astronomer Edwin Holmes in November 1892.

The above picture was taken on the night of the 8th November 2007 using a 200mm lens at f/2.8 (ISO 100) on a Fujifilm S2 digital SLR camera on a driven mount. This 59 second exposure was taken at 10:13pm. The bright star at the top of the picture is alpha Persei (Mirfak) and the one at the bottom right is delta Persei. The field of view is about 6.8 degrees across, so the comet is about 1/3 of a degree in size. The background sky has been altered to remove the orange glow from street lamps.

This close up from the same frame shows the way the gas from the comet is being blown towards the 2 o'clock position by the solar wind. In the opposite direction the wind is pushing up against the gas creating a thin shell. The bright consensation near the centre of the gas cloud is probably the comet itself.