In 1965, one of the brightest and most spectacular comets ever seen put on a memorable show in the morning twilight sky. It came out of nowhere and was described by some as ten times brighter than the full moon. In the days that followed their initial sighting, additional observations were reported, and preliminary orbits were computed, but these gave no hint that this new comet was anything out of the ordinary.

To everybody's surprise, though, it was announced that Comet Ikeya-Seki was going to literally graze the sun and probably become at least as bright as magnitude -7 (about eight times brighter than Venus)! 

Elizabeth Romer remarked on the breadth of observational data in Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific: "There seems no doubt that the appearance of Comet Ikeya-Seki will stand as a landmark in cometary physics."