Seeing as you brought fringe-dwellers post up, a couple of points I would like to raise, (1) Most of the really bright Comets in the last hundred years or more have been discovered by amateur astronomers,some of the observers where both amateur and proffessional, it has only been in the last twenty or so years that we have had a very coordinated search by by proffessionals. In my book what I call bright are comets that get to be seen in twilight or daylight such as Hale-Bopp, Hyaukataki, West, and Ikaya- Seki.
Comets like the LINEAR and NEAT that we have seen over the last few years are what I would call moderatly bright but not in the same league as the above named Comets.
Because a comet or an Asteroid is discovered at 17th mag doesn't do us that many favours,because at the moment if it was heading straight for us we could't do anything about anyway, and if you want to observe it you have to in most cases have to wait quite a while till it gets bright enough to see in even the largest of amateur scopes, and taking pictures of faint blobs of comets in MHO is not the greatest thrill in astronomy.
Isn't it strange that with all the Automated searches in the World that they have missed all these very bright objects, Bob Evens 40 or so Supernovae Bill Bradfield with his I think 40 Comets, it goes to show that we cannot rely on the automated searches to find everything.
So to those of US who spend many hours looking for Comets and Supernovae I say keep up the good work.astroron
