Young Quanzhi Ye's dream. In 1996, a 7-year-old boy in China bent over the eyepiece of a small telescope and saw something that would change his life--a comet of flamboyant beauty, bright and puffy with an active tail. At first he thought he himself had discovered it, but no, he learned, two men named "Hale" and "Bopp" had beat him to it. Mastering his disappointment, young Quanzhi Ye resolved to find his own comet one day. And one day, he did.

Comet Lulin ... will peak in brightness for observers on Earth on February 24, 2009, between magnitude +4 and magnitude +6. The comet became visible to the naked eye from dark-sky sites around February 7. The story behind the comet is more intriguing than its appearance — the greenish tinge may be hard for many to discern. The color comes from a type of carbon and cyanogen, a poisonous gas.