There is a new naked-eye "dwarf planet" in the solar system, and it can be easily found in the northeast sky even with the full moon nearby. It's actually Comet Holmes, but it's spherical "planet-like" appearance is easy to see in binoculars, and even with the naked eye under ideal conditions(!). It is close to the same brightness as the stars in the Big Dipper, and is as bright or brighter than most of the stars around it in the constellation Perseus, so if you are familiar with that constellation, you will find the "extra" star easily! It is the only comet I have ever seen whose appearance to the eye or in an eyepiece actually resembles the photographic images...
Here is an animated GIF that shows the relative size of the comet's spherical coma relative to the planet Jupiter...
... that also illustrates what it would look like if an object the size of the planet were heading straight toward earth!! In other words, from night to night, you see a spherical object, and each night, the radius of the sphere is bigger. Does that mean it is getting closer??
That is the illusion, but actually, Comet Holmes is a periodic comet discovered in the 1800s that orbits between Mars and Jupiter and never gets much closer to the earth than it is now.
HeavensAbove.com has added a comet page with an ephemeris that gives the comet's distance from the earth and the sun.
And on the Wikipedia page for Comet Holmes, they have a link to a java applet that shows the comet's orbit interactively.
Here is another still image that closely approximates what I saw last night from my back yard, even with a bright waning gibbous moon nearby in the constellation Taurus...
... which also shows the changes in the comet's relative size and appearance during a 48 hour interval. I am excited to look at the comet again tonight, to see if the comet has grown bigger, and how much it has moved against the background stars.
