All of a sudden, there's a comet in the sky. And it's Polish. Or at least it was named for its Polish discoverer, Grzegorz Pojmanski, of the Warsaw University Astronomical Observatory. He first spotted it on Jan. 2, 2006, in an image shot from Chile. Comet Pojmanski has since moved into the Northern sky, and it's visible just before dawn in Maryland.

I haven't seen it yet, but with skies likely to be clear and dry this weekend, it's an ideal opportunity to get a look before it fades away. Go out at the start of twilight - between 5 and 6 a.m. Look to the left of Venus, which is brilliant in the pre-dawn eastern sky. You'll need to scan the sky until you can pick it up. It's going to be a challenge. Once it's high enough above the horizon, the increasing twilight will begin to drown it out. Each morning it will rise a little higher, but it will also be fading.

Here's how it looked yesterday from Bursa, in Turkey. Here's another nice image. You'll need binoculars. Look for a fuzzy dot with a narrow tail extending to the upper right. Good luck.

Update: I'm just back from a rare (for me) pre-dawn stargazing expedition. I found a dark spot not far from the NCR bike trail, with a good view to the east. Very cold - 27 degrees. And very early - 5:30 a.m., with twilight brightening the southeastern sky. But after considerable searching the eastern sky, to the left of brilliant Venus, with my 10 x 50 binoculars I did manage to pick out the coma - the fog of dust surrounding the tiny head, or nucleus, of Pojmanski's Comet - about 20 degrees above the horizon.

It was the only fuzzy object in the area. Everything else was a nice, sharp pinpoint of light. I saw no sign of its tail. Too much twilight, or too low to the horizon, perhaps. For anyone out there with a copy of Starry Nights, or a star chart, the comet was just above 71 Aquilae, forming the apex of an almost equilateral triangle with 1 Aquari.

My Starry Nights computer program indicates the comet will move higher and to the left by Sunday morning. If you get up to see it, you can use the star chart in this Sky & Telescope link to help find it. Or star-hop from 71 Aquilae to 1 Aquari, and then a somewhat longer hop in roughly the same direction, to Pojmanski. Go earlier than I did - about 5 a.m. - and it will be darker. Maybe you can spot a tail. Good luck. And leave a comment here and let me know if you see it.

I need a nap.