More space for the day

Slate has an article by Phil Plait, who writes the Bad Astronomy blog and is an astronomer, public speaker, science evangelizer, and author of Death From the Skies!, about a naked-eye-visible comet called Lovejoy:

2014 hasn’t even ended yet, and we already have one of the best comets of 2015 showing off in our skies: C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy), already visible to the naked eye and predicted to get brighter over the next couple of weeks!
This is the fifth comet discovered by Australian "amateur" astronomer Terry Lovejoy. In 2011, one of “his” comets made a spectacular pass through the sky. This one may not be quite so ostentatious, but its location and brightness make it a winner. On 7 January 2015, it will pass about seventy million kilometers from Earth, and it’s predicted to peak around 4th magnitude; easily visible from dark skies without optical aid.
As a bonus, it’s passing near the constellation of Orion, making it easier to find, and it’ll also glide past Taurus and the Pleiades, providing for what should be some pretty photogenic scenes. It’s moving roughly north, so it gets higher all the time for Northern Hemisphere observers.
I went out on the evening of 28 December 2014 to take a look (in between snowstorms here in Colorado) and found it easily using my trusty 10x50 binoculars, not far from Rigel, the blue star marking Orion’s left foot. With my larger 15x70s (Celestron’s SkyMaster binocs, before you ask) I could see the tail, too, despite looking through city lights in that direction, plus having a first-quarter Moon illuminating the sky. I’m kicking myself that I didn’t take any pictures, but the temperature was hovering near -15° C, so I’m willing to forgive myself.
At (literally) the same time I was gawking at the comet, Roger Clark was taking a photo (above) of it a few dozen kilometers south of me in Denver, Colorado. Note the globular cluster M79 just above the comet, which was too faint for me to see with my binoculars. If you want to see this comet for yourself (and you do) it rises a couple of hours after sunset. For now, I suggest waiting until about nine-ish or so to look, since it will be high off the horizon then, but your timing may vary. It rises earlier every day, and by early January it’ll be high up by the time it gets dark (though the nearly full Moon will make things tougher; after about 7 January 2015 or so, the Moon will rise late enough that it won’t be as big a problem). Sky and Telescope has excellent maps with the comet’s path on them. If you have bad weather, or just want to stay indoors, the Virtual Telescope Project will have live online viewings on 6 January and 11 January 2015.
Here's a nifty three-hour time-lapse animation showing the comet's movement, taken by Phil Hart on 28 December 2014:

In the photos the comet appears green; many do, due to the way their constituent molecules glow when reacting to sunlight. That color may not be apparent to the eye when you see it, though. It looked gray to me when I saw it, but long exposures using cameras bring out the green hue.
As for the physical nature of the comet itself, it’s on a pretty long-period orbit, taking about fourteen thousand years to go around the Sun. The orbit takes it out to a distance of nearly ninety billion kilometers (for comparison, Neptune orbits at a distance of just under five billion kilometers). So Lovejoy got its start way the heck out in the solar system. The orbit is also wildly tilted to the plane of the solar system; it’s tipped by eighty degree to the paths the planets take. That’s why it’s getting so much better to see for northern observers; it’s heading up and out of the ecliptic (the line on the sky marking the path of the Sun, which is close to the plane of the solar system; we see it edge-on so it looks like a line). This may not be the first time this comet has headed into our neighborhood, but it’s the last any of us will get to see it.

Rico says, okay, so they didn't name it after Lovejoy the television series...