Comet 73/P Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 has been a very interesting short-period comet in recent years. A member of the Jupiter family of comets, the orbital period is approximately 5.5 years. Like most short-period comets, Comet Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 was a rather faint object, generally peaking at around 9th or sometimes 8th magnitude, and displaying a short tail. However things changed dramatically during the 1995 return, the comet's nucleus was observed to split into 4 fragments. Accompanying this fragmentation, was a surge in brightness that resulted in what was expected to be a moderately faint 9th magnitude comet, being easily visible to the naked eye, peaking at around magnitude 5.7 and displaying a tail up to 2 degrees long!
