There's a new comet in town, and it shares a nickname with a comet from last year.

In 2013, I wrote about comets ISON and PanSTARRS. The latter was a comet with an orbital period of more than 100,000 years (long enough and irregular enough to be considered non-periodic) and came closest to Earth on March 5, 2013.

The PanSTARRS of yesteryear is distinguished by its official name: C/2011 L4. C means it's a regular, non-periodic comet; 2011 was the year it was discovered (by the PanSTARRS telescope in Hawaii); and L stands for the month it was discovered (each month is classified under two letters from the alphabet - one for the first half and another for the second half, leaving out I and Z because we don't have enough months to use all 26 letters under this naming convention); and 4, meaning it was the fourth comet discovered in that timeframe.

This year's comet PanSTARRS is officially called C/2012 K1. So it's a regular, non-periodic comet discovered in the second half of May 2012, and it was the first comet discovered during that timeframe.

Good thing the International Astronomical Union is so precise with its naming, because when I first heard about comet PanSTARRS becoming visible through binoculars this month, I thought, "Wait a minute. I thought that comet had come around last spring. Is it back?"

Nope. The universe (or in this case, the Oort Cloud) keeps churning out new stellar spectacles. The latest and greatest PanSTARRS is already visible with binoculars near the sickle in the constellation Leo and will make its closest approach to Earth on Aug. 27. To find the sickle, look in the western sky 45 minutes after sunset about halfway up for the very bright star Regulus, which is at the bottom of the sickle's handle.

Photographs show the comet as glowing neon green and sporting two tails - one short and one quite long. It probably won't look quite like that through binoculars or even a telescope, but see if you can spot it anyway.

The next couple of weeks will be the last chance to catch C/2012 K1 at a convenient time and a relatively high altitude above the leafy trees of Connecticut. In mid-July, the comet falls into twilight's glow and then disappears from view. After passing the sun, it returns to view in mid-September in the pre-dawn sky, but by then it won't climb much higher than 20 degrees from the horizon for observers at our latitude.

localuniverse@msn.com

Sky Calendar

July 12 - Full moon.

July 26 - New moon.

July 28 into 29 - Delta Aquarids meteor shower peaks. This is an average shower with up to 20 meteors per hour at its peak, produced by debris left in the wakes of comets Marsden and Kracht. The shower runs annually from July 12 to Aug. 23. This should be a great year for this shower because the thin crescent moon will set early in the evening. Best viewing will be from a dark location after midnight. Meteors will radiate from the constellation Aquarius, but can appear anywhere in the sky.