Celestia Forums

Fantastic

Those are some good pictures of your simulations of a comet. This gives me
a forum to spout off about the greatest comet of our lifetimes. It came within
10 million miles of the Earth as a surprise guest. The press missed this one
except for very few articles while it was visible.

It was called Hyakutake on March 23, 1996 :
http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/comet/hyakutake/images.html
Since it was not predicted in advance, the press could not prepare people to
watch for it. Hyakutake suddenly appeared big and bright to the naked eye.
Most newspapers did not announce it, so billions of people slept through the
greatest comet of their lifetimes. I watched it at 3AM from Maui, Hawaii on
Haleakela Volcano. It went unmentioned at APOD until 43 days before it
outshone The Galaxy :
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap960208.html

I spanned the sky!

It's tail was 120 degrees long around March 23, 1996!

It was a million times bigger to the naked eye than Halley's Comet in 1986!

Hyakutake...wow! Can we see that in Celestia?

With 43 days warning, another flashy guest visitor could approach Earth even
closer than 10 million miles. Watch out!