Comet 17P/Holmes

Comet Holmes is not as dramatic as some, lacking the characteristic tail that makes some of these frozen wanderers so beautiful. Instead, it appears as a fuzzy, albeit distinct, starlike object, but with no noticeable tail. The comet is currently located among the stars of the constellation Perseus, which can be found about halfway up in the northeast part of the sky as darkness falls. Perseus is almost directly overhead by around 2 a.m. local daylight time and is still well up in the northwest sky as dawn begins to break.

Why Comet Holmes has undergone such an explosive outburst is not understood. What is amazing is that it made its closest approach to the sun last May, but came no closer than 191 million miles (307 million kilometers) to the sun. The comet is now moving away from the sun and currently is quite far out from Earth at a distance of 151 million miles (243 million kilometers).
This comet is part of Jupiter's "family" of comets—a group in which the far end of their respective orbits cluster around the orbit of Jupiter and takes 6.88 years to make one circuit around the Sun.

(Text from Space.com)