Marshall Swearingen, MSU News Service

BOZEMAN — For the next couple weeks, the northern nighttime sky holds a visual treat that's well worth seeing, according to Montana State University researcher Joe Shaw.

The comet known as NEOWISE "is pretty spectacular," said Shaw, a sky-viewing enthusiast and professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in MSU's Norm Asbjornson College of Engineering. "It's bigger and brighter than any comet I've seen since the '90s."

Resembling a large star with a glowing tail, NEOWISE is a chunk of icy and sooty rock roughly 3 miles wide that...