This morning Murphy woke me at about 4 am for a pee break. This is unusual, and I wasn’t real receptive to letting him out. But I also wasn’t real excited about having to clean up his ‘accident.’ So I headed off to the back door. Since the temps are rather mild right now, I went outside to wait for him to do his thing. And that’s when I looked up in the sky and saw it–this huge gigantic star! It was at least 5 times bigger than any star I had ever seen before. While it was kind of scary to see this huge thing in the sky, it was also fascinating and spectacular to gaze upon. However, it was 4 am and I was not ready to stay up for the day, so I headed back to bed with Murphy racing off ahead of me to his bed.

Later when it was the real time to get up, I got online to see if I could find out anything about this gigantic star I had seen. Turns out it was a comet named Holmes Comet…and it has exploded! That’s what is causing it to be so huge. Apparently it will be visible for the next couple of weeks, or possibly a month. Some reports say that it’s beginning to form a tail which would be even more astonishing to see.

I’ve gone outside every half hour or so tonight, but have yet to see it again. Possibly it is only visible in the early morning hours. I don’t know. I’m going to set my alarm for 4 am and will get up then to see if I can see it again. It is that spectacular that I’m willing to get up in the middle of the night to try to see it. Right now I can see Mars in the eastern sky and I remember that Mars was almost directly overhead early this morning, so I think the comet probably has yet to appear. I wish I had a camera that could take a picture of all this, but don’t think my digital camera is that powerful.

Keep your eyes on the skies. It is so worth seeing this unbelievable display of heavenly beauty.