Halley's was hugely disappointing, Hale-Bopp was striking in a limited kind of way, but Comet McNaught is breathtakingly beautiful.
After two nights of playing "catch me if you can" with stargazers while dodging behind clouds, mist and rain, the latest of the "Great Comets" finally decided to grace the sky along the Atlantic seaboard with wonderful views on Wednesday night.
While those inland have been disappointed, a group of comet watchers waiting on the slopes of Table Mountain got what they had been waiting for: a world-class view of the comet.
By 8.15pm, Venus was clearly visible, but Comet McNaught - named after the Australian astronomer who discovered it from Siding Spring on August 7 last year when it was still 200 000 times too faint to see with the unaided eye - remained elusive.
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'This may be Comet McNaught's only visit to Earth' Then, just five minutes later, University of Cape Town physics lecturer Gregor Leigh called out excitedly: "I can see it!"
In the next few minutes, all the others in the party also picked it up: a bright, shining head, pointing down towards the horizon, with a broad stubby tail streaming out behind it - just slightly to the left of where the sun had set and only marginally lower in the sky than Venus.
For the next 50 minutes or so, as the sky grew darker, they all watched entranced as the head glowed and the star-speckly tail increased in intensity and length and appeared to develop a slight curve as the comet "dropped" towards the horizon.
"I've seen three or four comets and I think this was the best," Leigh said.
"It's clear and it looks like the comets traditionally drawn in medieval pictures. It's an extremely beautiful thing."
Although best viewed through binoculars, the comet was clearly visible with the naked eye, because unlike previous much-hyped comets - Halley's and Shoemaker-Levy come to mind - McNaught is massive: just more than half a hand long.
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