Instant fame? Here cometh the comet 17P/Holmes

Its another full moon night which means the astrowolf in me has woken up and is baying for some night-sky watching. Actually, a full moon night is not a good time to watch the skies, but sometimes you don't have a choice. Added to this, the place I where stay has enough light pollution to discourage even the most ardent sky-watchers from looking up towards the heavens. I end up seeing a orange glow till late into the night. But there was some news this week that was positive enough to get my binoculars out.

A comet by name 17P/Holmes changed from a magnitude 17 to a magnitude 2 celestial object in a short span of a week. A quite unheard of phenomena in astronomy. So what's this magnitude thing? This is actually the scale of brightness based on which the stars and other sky objects are classified. The smaller the value of the magnitude the more the brightness. For example, the magnitude of our Sun is -26.7 and that of the moon is -12.7. Sirius or the Dog Star has a magnitude of -1.4. You get the point. In this case the brightening was enhanced by almost 400,000 times.

Astronomers are still pondering about this. Why should a comet that was faintly visible through a telescope suddenly brighten up so much that it could be seen with a naked eye? And with a pair of binoculars one could make out its tail and coma. Well, I am no scientist but I have an explanation for this. Its the 15-minute to fame thing. In a sky full of twinkling stars and other bright objects how can any John Star or John Comet make any place for itself? By becoming famous, of course. And how does one become famous? Through a lot of publicity in the right way (or sometimes the wrong way, too). Instant fame, that's the name of the game. Glitter in everyone's eyes. So Mr. 17P/Holmes who was just another Mr. 17P slash Holmes till last week, got tired of it and started to put some efforts into brightening up till he started got into everyone's eyes. But now everyone is talking about "the" 17P/Holmes. Quite an achievement, this. Mission accomplished. Maybe the comet took out a leaf from our earthlings' TV reality shows. Now everyone's talking about you till the time someone else upsets your applecart. I'd say one opportunity can be your ticket to fame. One missed opportunity means, wait for the next bus.

Putting my argument and speculation aside, if you have a chance, do watch the comet. Its visible in the skies even in areas where the light pollution is considerable. Its visible (Pic courtesy: Shigemi Numazawa) in the Perseus constellation a little left above Mars.