Comet Holmes- Perseus will never look the same!

I'm used to seeing Perseus as a gentle arc of three fairly bright stars and a few more dmmer ones - with Algol hanging way out there at the end of his arm. Now we have THE PERSEUS TRIANGLE.

Comet Homes makes a perfect naked eye triangle with Mirfak the brightest star at its peak and the base nicely anchored by Delta Persei and the comet. What a sight! Of course this neat little asterism won't last. When I say "Perseus will never look the same, " I only mean in my memory. Comet Holmes is slowly moving toward Mirfak and will be right next to it by about Novemeber 20. But for now, this new triangle is unmistakeable in the northeastern sky an hour or two after sunset. And it stays up all night! What a streange and terrific comet! Awesome indeed!

I viewed Comet Homes Tuesday night with Jim Braga and using the 8-inch and MallinCam Color hyper we were able to see up to 13 stars embedded in it, some as faint as Magnitude 14 and 15. How cool. As it spreads out it's also taking on texture and lsight changes in shape. The bright fan behind the nucleus seems more fan shaped than ever with a dark area in front of it. And the area of the comet's perimeter where the tail should be seemed a bit distorted and fragmented - the other side smoother.

We had to wait until about 10 pm for the Comet to clear the trees so the 15-inch Obsession could be pointed at it and there came another surprise - no embedded stars. Perhaps if we had looked more closely with our eyes better dark adapted we would have seen them? My conclusion? Either my scope isn't collimated properly, or the embedded stars are overwhelmed by all the light the 15-inch gathers from the coma.

All of which are minor details. I was out again at 4 am October 31, using the 8-inch and video camera and did the above sketch. Not as many embedded stars this time, but the comet's texture seemed more interesting to me. But what really excites me is:

1. Why is this comet so round? It's just hard to imagine an event that would kick up so much dust in so many directions at once and still leave the 2-3 mile comet intact?

2. Why is it growing so rapidly? Again,s ome event must have sent quite bit of dust rushing outwards.

3. It is hard to get your mind around two facts - how small this comet was and how big it became.

Exactly how much it brightened and how fast seems debateable at this point, but it was whole lot. But there's no doubt now that this comet covers about 10 arc minutes of sky (one third what the moon covers for us) and since it is 150 million miles away, it is huge> How huge.

Well if the comet is one third the size of the moon and 600 times as far away it must be about 200 times the Moon's actual diamter of about 2100 miles - so that would put it at roughly 420,000 miles in diamter. That means if the comet was actually located at the moon, we would nearly be inside it!

Hmmmm... would we see anything at that point? A comet's tail is about as close to nothing as you can get - sort of like dust motes floating in a beam of sunlight cming through the window. So presumably if we were inside it we would hardly know it. (The Earth passed through the tail of Halley's comet in 1910 with no consequewnces worth mentioning.) What I don't know is how dense is the dust in this round comet? Like that in a tyupical tail? I suspect so, since we can easily see stars right through it and they don't appears to be diminished inbrioghtness.

But main puzzle remains: Why would a comet that had been minding its own business as a dim little minor member of our solar system, suddenly brighten a million times and puff out this huge cloud of dust and gas?