Well not really comets, more meteorites actually. While most sensible people in the northern hemisphere (in Western Europe and North America at least) were asleep, two vintage aircraft were flying through the night in close formation across the Atlantic from Spain to the USA on the night of 18 November. Both were rigged with airborne telescopes and were packed with astronomers chasing the annual Leonid meteor shower which some say may well be the best display of the 21st century. One was a US Air Force NKC-135 and the other a NASA DC-8. Seeing as the NKC-135 is a 707 family derivative and theDC-8 is, well - a DC-8, one might stretch a point and say both really were Comet chasers after all. Ahhhhhh...de Havilland. (That's enough tenuous connections - Ed.)
Source: Flight International