Astronomy - Naked-eye comet bursts into view - Richard Talcott

Comet 17P/Holmes has brightened nearly a million times in the past 2 days and can be seen as a point of light with the naked eyes in Perseus.

This is a helluva big deal because not much of what happens out there happens so fast. When London observer Edwin Holmes discovered the comet in November 1892, it was also in an outburst and some 100,000 times brighter than it normally is. Nobody has determined what causes the object's spectacular fluctuations.