Some of you have asked me how far comet Holmes is from Earth. Silly me....I've been so interested in monitoring it's brightness and size, that I haven't really paid much attention to it's distance....until last night.
According to Starry Night software, it reached it's closest distance to Earth on November 5, at
150,687,900 miles.

November 16: 151,776,000 miles.
December 16: 168,181,200 miles.
January 16: 203,502,600 miles.
February 16: 249,965,400 miles.
March 16: 296,372,400 miles.

In other words, it is getting farther from Earth...and the Sun. Comet Holmes is on it's journey back out of our Solar System.

As of this writing, the size of the coma (debris cloud) is 1.4 million kilometers (900,000 miles) in diameter....larger than the Sun!!!!!!! Not too shabby for a comet with a nucleus of only about 2 miles in diameter!!!

We can't see any tail from the comet, because comet tails ALWAYS point AWAY from the Sun, and we are almost directly between the Sun and the comet. The tail is actually behind the comet from our perspective.