04/26/2026
If only I was a night owl!!
THE COMET IS 44 MILLION MILES AWAY.
RIGHT NOW. TONIGHT.
That is the closest it has been to Earth
in 170,000 years.
And most people are asleep.
It is in the sky right now.
Pre-dawn. Southeastern sky.
Waiting.
Here is exactly how to get there in 5 minutes.
STEP 1. SET YOUR ALARM.
Tomorrow morning. 4:45 AM local time.
Put on the nearest layer of clothing.
Walk outside.
Face southeast.
That is all the preparation you need.
STEP 2. FIND VENUS.
You cannot miss it.
The brightest point of light in the entire southern sky.
Blazing white. No twinkling.
Low on the southeastern horizon.
It looks like a diamond.
Locate it. Anchor your eye on it.
STEP 3. LOOK ONE FIST-WIDTH ABOVE VENUS.
Hold your fist at arm's length.
Point it toward Venus.
Look just above your fist.
You are now looking directly at the comet.
STEP 4. FIND THE SMUDGE.
From a suburban location:
a soft blur. A patch of sky that seems
slightly too bright for empty space.
A smudge that is clearly not a star.
From a rural dark sky:
visible immediately, unmistakable.
A soft green-white glow with structure.
That smudge is the coma.
That is 44 million miles of ancient ice
being blasted apart by the Sun.
STEP 5. RAISE ANY BINOCULARS.
The smudge becomes a world.
A brilliant white-gold nucleus.
The actual body of the comet.
Ancient solar system material, frozen for billions of years.
A vivid green coma surrounding it.
Tens of thousands of miles wide.
The gas cloud produced by solar heat
striking ancient ice.
A broad, curved white dust tail.
Sweeping to the upper right.
Millions of miles of particles,
each reflecting sunlight independently.
A razor-straight blue ion tail.
Pointing hard left.
Charged gas blown directly away from the Sun
by the solar wind at 250 miles per second.
Two tails. Two completely different physical processes.
Both visible simultaneously.
Both happening right now.
At 44 million miles.
WHAT HAPPENS TOMORROW.
Every morning from now:
the comet is 3 to 5 million miles farther from Earth.
The coma slightly smaller.
The tails slightly shorter.
The nucleus slightly fainter.
This is not a permanent fade.
It is a slow recession into the outer solar system.
By July it is gone from amateur view entirely.
Then 170,000 years of nothing.
Tonight is not the last chance.
But it is the best one remaining.
Is your alarm set?
