For us comet lovers, one of Gordon Garradd's discoveries is the coolest such object up there, just now. Comet Garradd (formal designation C/2009 P1) has been plowing along toward the sun, growing more impressive by the night.

This comet seems to like globular clusters, those big round collections of ancient stars. It cruised close to globular cluster M15 from the morning of Aug. 2 through the morning of Aug. 3, and now its tail is predicted to overlay globular cluster M71 on Friday night-Saturday morning, Aug. 26-27.

[View of Comet Garradd taken by Bernhard Hubl from his backyard observatory in Nussbach, Austria. The comet is passing near the globular cluster M15. To see a larger version, click HERE -- and for an even larger view, click the image that shows up at the link]

Garradd and another astronomer, Rob McNaught, are the staff of the Siding Spring Survey, part of an effort to detect near-Earth objects (NEOs), which are potentially dangerous asteroids and comets. They work at Siding Spring Observatory, New South Wales, Australia, about 250 miles northwest of Sydney. The survey is the southern counterpart of the Catalina Sky Survey based at Mt. Bigelow near Tucson, according to the Australian National University.