Cosmic Log has a terrific list of night-sky highlights for 2013. Some of them look interesting enough to keep me up past my strictly-observed 9 PM bedtime.

November-December for Comet ISON: Will ISON shine "brighter even than the full moon" a year from now? That seems hard to believe right now, but by next autumn, astronomers should have a good idea just how much of a phenomenon the comet could turn into. NASA's Curiosity rover may be able to snap a picture when ISON passes by Mars in September, and it could become visible to the naked eye in October. It's due to come well within a million miles of the sun at perihelion on Nov. 28 — and that will be the most dramatic moment for skywatchers. Some comets, like last year's Comet Elenin, break up when they slingshot around the sun. Others, like Comet Lovejoy, survive the encounter spectacularly. If ISON lucks out, we could well be raving about the Great Christmas Comet of 2013 by this time next year. (Just don't believe anyone who tells you it's a doomsday comet.)

The 'Comet of the Century' ... and other night-sky highlights for 2013

(Image: 365::225 - The Dark Half, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from badcomputer's photostream)

Read more in Family at Boing Boing

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

TAGS: astronomy family

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http://www.facebook.com/shiftynick Nicholas Underwood

Keeping the latest updates at http://cometinformer.com/comet-ison/
http://www.jjsaul.com Jim Saul

On February 15th, “2012 DA14″ will pass less than 20,000 miles from the surface of the earth.

At 57 meters wide, it’s not expected to be visible to the naked eye, but I wonder if a small backyard scope could catch it. I can’t seem to find an apparent magnitude estimate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_DA14
joe blough

i was able to catch 2005YU55 with a 200mm lens, but i don’t remember the magnitude.

there’s a good comet page here:

http://www.aerith.net/comet/weekly/current.html

besides ISON, C/2011 L4 (PanSTARRS) is supposed to be a good comet this spring.
http://www.facebook.com/kalle.kepponen John Smith

Weekly images

http://great-comet.com
http://twitter.com/rvitelli Romeo Vitelli

“(Just don’t believe anyone who tells you it’s a doomsday comet.)”
Doomsday comets have a long history. It just wouldn’t be a real event without at least a few people freaking out about the end of the world.

http://drvitelli.typepad.com/providentia/2010/08/comet-crazy.html
- TheMadLibrarian
  
  AFAIK, we are out of doomsday material right now, so the arrival of comet ISON is fortuitous, at least for the ZOMGRUNHIDEWEREALLGONNADIE crowd.
  - http://twitter.com/rvitelli Romeo Vitelli
    
    Don’t forget Apophis (which is even bigger than scientists realized).
Circulator38

Comet C/2012 S1 Facebook Page – http://facebook.com/C2012S1