...Speaking of cometary close encounters

[Chardok]

question for those of you more learned than I. When I was in basic, I was cut off from all outside news. Imagine my surprise when one night I looked up into the sky while polishing my boots to see what I would late discover to be the brilliant comet Hale-Bopp coloring the sky with it's bright white and purple tail/coma. (Coma? Corona? Can't remember) it was pretty awesome, not being privy to information beforehand and discovering it for myself. I remember feeling even a little scared because I'd never seen a comet before - I just knew that's what it was. Was it going to hit us? What's going on? Why has no one told us? I couldn't believe I was the first person in my entire company to look up and see the thing. (I was also weirded out that I seemed to be the only one who cared)

My question is this: Are we scheduled at any time in the near future to see anything like Hale-Bopp again? At least in our lifetimes.

[General Zod]

Here's a handy list of known periodic comets and their orbital times. Also, Halley's comet is scheduled to show up again around 2061ish.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

question for those of you more learned than I. When I was in basic, I was cut off from all outside news. Imagine my surprise when one night I looked up into the sky while polishing my boots to see what I would late discover to be the brilliant comet Hale-Bopp coloring the sky with it's bright white and purple tail/coma. (Coma? Corona? Can't remember) it was pretty awesome, not being privy to information beforehand and discovering it for myself. I remember feeling even a little scared because I'd never seen a comet before - I just knew that's what it was. Was it going to hit us? What's going on? Why has no one told us? I couldn't believe I was the first person in my entire company to look up and see the thing. (I was also weirded out that I seemed to be the only one who cared)

My question is this: Are we scheduled at any time in the near future to see anything like Hale-Bopp again? At least in our lifetimes.

Well, if you plan on being alive in 2061, that year's apparition of Halley's Comet will have a brightness somewhere between Alpha Centauri and Saturn, making it a bit dimmer than Hale-Bopp was. If you plan on being alive when Halley's Comet comes this way again in 2134, that apparition is expected to easily surpass Hale-Bopp's. (Though neither of these compares to the Comet McNaught of 2007, which had an apparent magnitude of -5.5 and could be seen in daylight at its very best. Though it was positioned for best nighttime viewing in the southern hemisphere.) Otherwise, the really bright "Great Comets" tend to be absurdly long-period (with orbital periods exceeding thousands of years) comets making their first couple of visits to the inner Solar System (like Hale-Bopp, which was last visible some 4300 years ago.) Which is to say their appearance is almost entirely random, with only a few months warning between the time it turns up as a faint smudge on a comet hunter's long-exposure astrograph to a mind-blowing naked-eye object.

So the answer is yes and no. Comet Halley's next two apparitions are expected to be quite good. However, a Great Comet (meaning a really bright, naked-eye comet. Quite unlike the vast majority of short-period comets . . . most of which make good binocular or telescopic objects, but rather unimpressive visual objects) could appear at practically any time.

[Chardok]

snip

Aww, well, I suppose that's good and bad news. I kind of like the idea of looking up and just seeing it out of the blue, so I'm hopeful the latter is the case (almost no warning) and from what I remember of Halley's last appearance...*snore* so, here's to hoping that we get something better between now and then. Thanks for the explanation, though!

[starslayer]

Looking back over the history of Great Comets, it seems they come about once every decade or so (at least, they've been doing that for the past couple of centuries). So, on average, I think you can expect to wait about 10 years and see one (especially if you're willing to travel) at any given time. Like Terwynn said, though, with most you'll have a few months warning at best.