A 17th mag. comet in the constellation of Cancer that was discovered last week and confirmed and announced today:

2012 S1 ISON (an observatory project name, not a person).
This comet will pass the sun in November, 2013 and then approach even closer to earth by Dec. 29th 2013

The projected magnitude of this comet on November 29 is going to be nearly MINUS 7 (-7.0).

Hale Bopp, according to Wikipedia, made it up to a magnitude of +2 and it was quite bright!  -7 is crazy bright.

This will be a history maker.

Link: [link to www.arksky.org]