Walter Harris
Astronomer
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Comet Linear WM1 will possibly be a visible object when it comes within 50,000,000 km of the Earth in the first week of December. With even a modest amateur telescope, you ought to be able to see this object in the Southern sky right after Sunset or before Sunrise.

Astronomer*
There are a class of periodic comets whose orbits are known. Their apparitions can be predicted, but there are also many comets that show up every year that have never been seen before. Therefore, it is impossible to accurately answer this question.

Astronomer*
Visible? There are comets visible now with the right telescopes. It is difficult to predict bright comets.

Douglas Scott
Professor
University of British Columbia
There are always comets visible if you have a big enough telescope. As far as naked-eye comets are concerned, many of the most spectacular ones are only discovered a few months before they put on their big show. So no one can predict.

Dr. Michael M. Davis
Astronomer
SETI Institute
I'm not a comet expert, but check out http://www.seds.org/nineplanets/nineplanets/comets.html. I didn't find the answer to your question after a quick search their, but they have lots of links to other sites that may give the answer.

Prof. Wayne G. Roberge
Theoretical Astrophysicist
Rensselaer Polytechnic Inst.
For a list of comets visible to the naked eye or through telescopes, check out http://cometography.com/current_comets.html

Unfortunately, there's nothing visible this year. But comets appear unexpectedly, so this could change.

Andrew Liddle
Astronomer
University of Sussex, UK
Don't know I'm afraid. Often new comets appear which are not predicted in advance.

Karen Vanlandingham
Assistant Professor
Columbia University's Biosphere 2 Center
There are comets visible all the time - it's just a matter of how bright they are. Comet LINEAR will be visible from the northern hemisphere in late June.

Professor*
There are many comets "visible" through telescopes
all the time.

Martin Duncan
Professor of Physics
Queen's University, Canada
There are always comets coming by in a given year. Some come round every few years but the really spectacular ones tend to come from so far away (from the Oort cloud out at
distance of 20,000 times the Earth-sun distance) that they are essentially invisible out there and are only found a few months (or at best years) before they put on a big show. Most of those will not reappear in our lifetimes. A good place to get information is in the magazine Sky and Telescope (or its website).

Professor Rex A. Saffer
Physicist, Astronomer, Educator
Dept. of Astronomy & Astrophysics, Villanova University
Some comets come back on a regular basis, for example Haley's comet every 76 years. But most comets come without us knowing about them in advance, and we usually only see them once as they come in and then go back out. Here is a good web site to find out almost anything you need to know about when and where astronomical events will happen:

http://www.skypub.com

Bob Mathieu
Professor of Astronomy
Department of Astronomy, University of Wisconsin - Madison
I'm sure someone else will be more familiar with the comet population than me. But my colleague Chris Anderson tells me that there is a comet approaching that will pass through our skies in late November. It will be quite close to the Earth, and thus move very fast across the sky and be visible only a couple of weeks. Its not certain yet whether it will be visible to the naked eye, but if so I'm sure you'll hear about it in the newspapers.

John Huchra
Astronomer/Professor
Harvard-Smithsonian
Hmmm. There are Comets visible with telescopes *all* of the time. I don't know when the next bright one will be; often they are irregular comets (not periodic) that just pass through the inner solar system once (P.S. I discovered a comet back in 1973)

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