The comet brightened pretty quickly, and it now has a magnitude of +7.8 – not bright enough for our own eyes, but visible with a small telescope or binoculars. But the best is yet to come ...

“you’ll know that Earth is crossing the path of the most famous comet,” said Shauna Edson of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. The Eta Aquarids are “pretty fast meteors ...