Joe Rao is Space.com's skywatching columnist, as well as a veteran meteorologist and eclipse chaser who also serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for Natural History magazine, the Farmers' Almanac and other publications.
A combination of five 120-second exposures taken by the Virtual Telescope Project facility in Manciano, Italy on March 5 showing comet 12P/Pons-Brooks and the Andromeda galaxy., besides fair weather and a little luck are good binoculars or a telescope and sky map to help guide you to where this celestial vagabond happens to be.
On Sept. 2, 1883, British-born American comet observer William R. Brooks accidently found it. Like Pons, Brooks was a prolific discoverer of comets. In fact, his total of 27 visual discoveries is second only to Pons. Not until the first orbital calculations of Brooks' discovery was made, was it realized that this comet and the comet found by Pons of 1812 were one of the same. So, this comet now bears the surnames of both observers.
Also, of special interest in 1883-1884 was that, on a few occasions, this comet seemingly was prone to sudden outbursts or flare-ups in brightness, helping to brand it as a famously capricious comet. His belief is that while 12P/Pons-Brooks brightened dramatically last summer when the comet was far from the sun and just beginning to get active, that for any flare-ups in the near-future, the comet will not appear to brighten very much because the overall brightness of the comet has increased significantly as it now has moved much closer to the sun.
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