TYPICAL. You wait years for a comet to appear in the northern sky, then two come along at once!
We were hoping that Comet ISON would be bright enough to see with binoculars by now, but it's not quite there yet. By early November it should be, though, and I'll tell you exactly where, when and how to see it then. In the meantime, another comet, Comet Encke, is a little easier to find.
To find Comet Encke you'll need to be up at around 5am and facing the east, where the stars of the constellation Leo are shining above the horizon, with the orange-red spark of Mars there beneath them. Much brighter Jupiter is still there, to Mars's upper right, high in the south. Comet Encke is glowing softly below and to the left of Mars, not far above the horizon. You won't see it with your naked eye, you'll need to sweep the sky above the treetops with binoculars to see it, and even then it will only look like a small, fuzzy ‘star,’ slightly greenish in colour. It's not much to look at, until you consider that you're seeing a huge space iceberg melting in the heat of the Sun, releasing millions of tons of dust in the process...
Stuart Atkinson
Eddington Astronomical Society of Kendal
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