Comet 17P/Holmes and 8P/Tuttle

Over two months after its outburst, Comet Holmes is still visible to the naked eye, slowly moving about the northern sky, slowly growing even larger, and also slowly fading. On the other hand, Comet Tuttle, another periodic comet, is rapidly brightening and speeding by, spending only a few days in this part of the sky.

Place your cursor on the photo to see inset enlargements of the comets taken on the same night at higher magnification. Both inset images are at the same scale. If you don't have Javascript enabled, click on the photo to switch to the inset image version.

If you have a fast data link, 2x higher resolution views are available for browsing without the insets, or with inset views.