In fact, comets generally swell up as they approach the Sun, so the comet-Sun distance is even more important than the comet-Earth distance. (Nobody can predict what any given comet will do, which is why I keep saying "generally" and "probably.")

However, the comet happens to be passing unusually close to Earth right now, just 0.58 a.u. By perihelion, we'll be 1.22 a.u. from the comet -- more than twice as far. Meanwhile, the comet-Sun distance is increasing very slowly, from 1.13 a.u. right now to 1.02 a.u. at perihelion. Such a small change won't have a tremendous effect.

The reason the comet-Earth distance is changing so fast is that we're on completely different orbits, rushing past each other like cars on opposite sides of a highway. But the comet is swinging around the Sun, tracing a nearly circular shape as it does so. Play around with that JPL Java app and you'll see what I mean."/> Violation:
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Traditionally, since the days when all comets were detected by peering through a telescope's eyepiece, comets have been named after their discoverers. Even back then, this caused confusion since many people discovered more than one comet. So comets have always also been designated by the year of discovery.

Naming comets after discoverers still continues for tradition's sake, but this is increasingly meaningless in an age when the great majority of comets are found by automated sky surveys. So comet specialists use the formal designation instead — which in this case is C/2006 VZ₁₃.

As for our charts, they're produced by a proprietary star-charting program written by Roger Sinnott. It's used to produce all of the charts that we run online, in our magazines, and all star atlases since the Second Edition of Sky Atlas 2000.0. You'll note that the style of the comet chart is nearly identical to the Pocket Sky Atlas.

But the real secret isn't the program — it's old-fashioned elbow grease. First I spent a couple of hours trying different scales and projections, figuring out how many stars to plot and which deep-sky objects to include. Then I spent a couple of minutes running our charting program. And then I gave the output to Gregg Dinderman, illustrator extraordinaire, and he spent a couple more hours moving labels so they wouldn't lie atop important stars, adding leader lines when necessary, and making sure that everything matched our standard style."/> Violation:
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