Two comets bright enough to see with the unaided eye will pass through the night sky in May and June 2004. One will climb high in the western evening sky in mid to late May, although it will fade as it moves higher in the sky. The other won't show up until late in the month, and will remain quite low in the southwest.

The first comet is catalogued as C/2001 Q4 (NEAT). NEAT is the Near Earth Asteroid Tracking program, which uses automated telescopes to scan the sky for asteroids or comets that come close to Earth's orbit around the Sun. These "near-Earth objects" could potentially slam into our planet, causing major destruction.

The second comet is C/2002 T7 (LINEAR). It's one of about a hundred comets discovered by the Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research project, another automated asteroid and comet search program, which uses a pair of telescopes in New Mexico.

Both projects also discover many comets and asteroids that present no threat to Earth, as is the case with both NEAT and LINEAR.