Resolves YES if there are credible news reports that Nishimura was visible with the naked eye before the close date.
Related questions


@Shump I don’t know if that counts as a substantiated claim. There were many articles claiming it would technically be visible to the naked eye but given the difficulty of the angle with the sun etc I haven’t seen any reports of an actual person verifying that they saw it with their eyes. (I.e. a named person providing a specific location and time where they saw it)

@JoshuaHedlund Here are some reports of people seeing it. And that was 12 days ago. It only grew brighter.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Astronomy/comments/16e1xn4/has_anyone_been_able_to_see_the_nishimura_comet/
@Shump Thanks that’s good info. I only see one user there claiming to have seen it (flick477) but it seems to be a naked eye claim.
@Shump although the question says “credible news reports” so I don’t know whether or not they would count that. It’s the best detail I’ve seen yet tho

@JoshuaHedlund Well it describes itself as a news report, and it says it was naked eye visible. However it seems like it's on a website run by an astronomy app. This hurts its "credibility" in my mind, since the app has a motivation to hype up the comet to get people to download.
Also I say "reports" in the description, so I would need at least two. @Shump and anyone else interested, I'll give a few days if you want to look more for articles.

@BoltonBailey Quoting NYT:
"Its brightness will peak over the weekend and into Monday’s sunrise, rivaling that of the North Star. You can use binoculars or a telescope for an even better view."
The implication is clearly that it is visible to the naked eye.
Here's another report that says that it's visible to the naked eye.
That Reddit thread had 2 eyewitnesses (also PerspectivEncounters)

@Shump Yep. This is a YES, I'll resolve now. (I can't read the paywalled article, but I'll trust you quoted it correctly).
Seems to be capturable on camera with long exposure but not visible to naked eye thus far. https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/891292-c2023-p1-nishimura-sept-10th-2023/








