Edwin Holmes of London, England was a regular observer of the Andromeda galaxy, M31, so he knew the region very well. On the evening of 1892 November 6, with skies that were not very favorable, he finished making a few observations of Jupiter and some double stars with his 32-cm reflector, and then decided to take a quick look at the faint companions of Mu Andromedae and the nearby galaxy M31 before quitting for the night. Upon turning the reflector toward that region, he saw what he thought was M31 enter the field of the finder, but when he looked through the eyepiece he saw something different. Holmes said he "called out involuntarily, 'What is the matter? There is something strange here.' My wife heard me and thought something had happened to the instrument and came to see." The object in the field of Holmes' telescope was a comet with a coma about 5 arc minutes across and with a bright nucleus.
Holmes had discovered his comet during an outburst that made it btighten dramatically. 115 years later the comet has done it again. despite being between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter comet Holmes is once again visible to the naked eye, this time in the constellation of Perseus. The image below shows the comet as a bright (approx. 2.5 mag) star (arrowed). Through a pair of binoculars the comet is obviously not a star but rather a ball of nebulocity, I can see why Holmes called out.
As comets go this one is unusual. It is so far out that from earth we are effectively looking down the barrel of the comet, the tail fanning out behind it. As a result the comet appears almost circular.
The following are my attempts to image the comet during this rare outburst. The first image is taken using a Sony Cybershot P73 and a 30 second exposure. All other images are taken using a modified Vesta 685 Webcam fitten with a monochrome CCD.

28th October 2007

This was my first chance to  image comet Holmes during the outburst. The comet is quite bright, easy to find and easy to image.

I used a Konus 80mm F5 refractor and a home made 150mm F6 reflector to image.

The image to the left is taken through the 80mm refractor. A stack of 60 images of 2 seconds each.

Taken through the 150mm F6 relector at Newtonian focus.

The core is burnt out in this image to try and bring out detail in the coma.

A stack of 98 images, Gain 78, Gamma 0.

Same details as the above image, however I used a gain of 60 and a Gamma of 100 to avoid burning out the core of the comet.

29th October 2007

The comet is rapidly expanding too. I took this image using a focal reducer which reduces the image in size by 60%. If you move your mouse over the image it will show yesterdays image at the same scale for comparison. Quite a bit bigger in just 24 hours.

All in all a pretty wet evening. However I was blessed with half an hour of intermittant clear skies.
The passing clouds have taken their toll on the image, but it does show some detail right down to the core.

Again a series of 99 stacked 2 second exposures.

Another gap in the clouds.

This is a stack of 80 4 second exposures.

A slightly smoother image as a result.

30th October 2007

31st October 2007

150mm F6

Roll over the image for an image to show the core details.

1st November 2007

150mm F6

Roll over the image to see a negative image, strongly processed to bring out some core detail.

5th November 2007

150mm

Processed for core detail

Mouse over for a negative image.

8th November 2007

11th November 2007

12th November 2007

16th November 2007

22nd November 2007

Comet Holmes and the

Moon to the same scale

23rd November 2007

80mm FR

full moon close by