Currently appearing nearly overhead in the night sky is Comet Lovejoy, last seen around these parts 11,000 years ago. Later this winter it will travel back out of our solar system and not return to Earth for another 8,000 years.

The comet is barely visible to the naked eye, but a pair of binoculars helps considerably. It was discovered last August by Terry Lovejoy of Queensland, Australia, his fifth comet discovery.

Over Christmas, the comet unexpectedly brightened as it moved north into a better observable position for those residing in the Northern Hemisphere. By 8 o’clock every night this week, the comet is located high overhead. It can be seen later in the evening in the west, until about 2 a.m., when the constellation it resides in sets in the west.

Comets are visitors from the outer reaches of our solar system or even farther beyond. They are big clumps of debris and ice, left over from the earliest years of our solar system. They can be as big as a city block, or as small as Chappaquiddick. They carry the frozen primordial soup, the materials that later became planets, moons and asteroids.

What distinguishes comets from all other objects in our solar system is not what they are made of, but rather their extreme journey. Unlike large planets that circle the sun in stable orbits, comets are caught in elliptical orbits that bring them close to the sun at one end, and out amid the outer planets or far beyond at the other end. Some comets don’t even have orbits, and are mavericks just passing through our solar system en route to some other distant place.

When comets approach the sun they get warmer and emit a visible tail that can be as long as a half a million miles. The tail is made up of vaporizing ices formed by frozen gases.

Comet Lovejoy will be closest to the sun on Jan. 30. At that time it will be 120 million miles from the sun. The closest Comet Lovejoy came to Earth was on Jan. 7, when it was 43.6 million miles from Earth. For purposes of comparison, the sun is about 93 million miles from Earth.

Comet Lovejoy looks like a barely visible faint blueish star that is also fuzzy. The core of the fuzz, the coma, looks like a star. The imperceptible small nucleus is within the coma. From one night to the next, its movement moves slowly across the stars, less than the movement of the moon. Comet Lovejoy will be viewable in our night sky well into February, but as the nights pass it will grow dimmer.

Comet Lovejoy is far more impressive when looking through a telescope. The color of the coma is brighter, and the fuzz is more distinguished. Astrophotographers have been able to photograph the comet’s tail, but even with a telescope the tail is difficult to see.

Visibility of this comet was improved this week due to clearer skies and less moonlight. On Monday night the comet was just west of the Pleiades, a star cluster in the zodiacal constellation Taurus, also referred to as the Seven Sisters. The comet will remain just west of the star cluster for the nights ahead as it continues to move north. On Jan. 29, the comet will appear to the right of the bright star Algol in the constellation Perseus.

It has been a number of years since a comet could be viewed in Vineyard skies. Last year at this time Comet ISON was predicted to be an easy find but wasn’t. When Comet ISON traveled close to the sun it fell apart and vanished, creating a contemporary retelling of the story of Icarus, the mythological flier who with wings of feathers and wax flew too close to the sun and perished.