How long until another comet is visible to the naked eye in the Midwestern US? Any routine comets whose orbits we can predict coming this way soon? Any recent discoveries that are expected to make their way to our corner of the cosmos?
Naked-eye comets show up every year or two. Magnificent comets, though… Well, it depends on your definition of “magnificent”, but not much more than once a decade or two. And the really impressive comets are always harder to predict, because a comet that’s been through multiple times already will have lost much of its luster. Remember Halley 1984?
The term of art for the type of comet you want is a “great comet”. Here’s a list of some of them.
Note that in that list, the dates of discovery are given as part of the name. Hale-Bopp, for instance, is numbered “1995 O1”, indicating that it was the first comet discovered in the first half of August 1995. (The month is indicated by the letters: “A” = first half of January, “B” = second half of January, etc.) This is important to note because you can see that we have relatively little lead time between a new comet’s discovery and its maximum brightness: usually about a year is typical. I would bet cash money on the next great comet being one we don’t know about yet.
No, but I remember seeing it in late 1985 and early 1986. What a disappointment after 20 years of eager anticipation. Hyakutake was pretty nice in 1996.
Saw Hale-Bopp and Hyakutake back in the 1990s and enjoyed them both. The 21st century has been pretty fallow.
The last entry in that list - comet McNaught - was a champion. The catch was that it was spectacular only in the southern hemisphere. (I saw it in New Zealand.)
I doubt I see a better one in my lifetime.