In the south of France this weekend we were graced with a clear view of the Perseid meteor shower in the midnight sky.

Within an hour of watching the Perseids, however, we witnessed a once-in-a-lifetime luxury: a comet.

My first reaction was that we were observing SpaceX’s Starlink. Yet the object didn’t resemble a typical description of Starlink’s satellite train, nor did the timing match. Pursuant to some research and conversations with a regional observatory, the celestial phenomenon we witnessed turned out to be the Nishimura comet, originally discovered by amateur astronomer, Hideo Nishimura.