An obscure comet discovered more than a century ago suddenly became about a million times brighter late last month, wowing amateur astronomers in Colorado and around the world. Scientists are so intrigued with the changeable Comet Holmes, they asked for, and got, emergency viewing time on the over-scheduled Hubble Space Telescope last week. The comet was discovered in the 1890s by amateur astronomer Edwin Holmes. At the time it was also strangely luminous for a few months, said Chris Peterson, owner of a robotic telescope in Guffey that's used to track big meteors for the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. Holmes completes its orbit every seven years, but it never gets close enough to the sun to go through the regular, bright outgassings of more well-known comets, such as Halley or Hale-Bopp, he said. This is very cool because it was forund in the 1980's and has been getting brighter ever since. Some of these things that scientists find are really cool and should be apperciated. It got about one million times brighter since it was discovered. The core is about 6 miles across and can be seen at night sometimes.