Ancient cultures – the Chinese, in particular – thought comets were 'celestial ambassadors', and even today comets have a reputation for being harbingers of momentous events. A new visitor to the inner Solar System was discovered in 2007 and catalogued C/2007 N3. Identified by 19-year-old meteorology student Quanzhi Ye of Sun Yat-sen University, the comet has been given the proper name Comet Lulin  after the Lulin Observatory of the NCU, which is where the first images were obtained.

Its coma (atmosphere) is 500,000km (311,000 miles) wide, that's triple the diameter of Jupiter, and it is travelling at a speed estimated to be around 140,000 mph. The closest approach of 0.4AU (38 million miles), nowhere near the Earth, was plotted to occur during the last week of February, 2009.

Astronomy Picture of the Day website posted two images of Comet Lulin within a week, on 02 February and 07 February, which alerted those keen skywatchers who didn't already know of the existence of the comet. We now knew that it had a tail and an antitail which led to more spectacular shots of this turquoise-coloured fleeting visitor.

From our perspective Comet Lulin was right next to Saturn in the constellation Leo on Monday night, 23 February. For lucky viewers with dark skies, Comet Lulin looked like a fuzzy ball, visible with the naked eye. Binoculars or a telescope aided the chances of locating the comet, and maybe a tail or two. Unfortunately people living in cities and well-lit areas needed to find a dark sky viewing area.

Comet Lulin is shaping up to be one of the astronomical events of 2009, although it will have to put on a grand performance to beat its compatriot Comet Holmes in late 2007, which was pretty spectacular and even changed the look of Perseus for a while.