Comet C/2007 N3 Lulin

Managed to catch it in binos (10 X 50's) from my backyard in Daingean, but I had to sweep to find it, I couldn't see it with the naked eye. That was at around 20:55hrs. I guessed it to be about 5 to 6 Saturn's in diameter in my field of vision.

But, on my way into work (where I am now) I stopped in the bog 2 miles out the road from home, idled the jeep, and stood in the darkness for about 3 minutes trying to catch it in my averted vision (21:35hrs). And yes, I spotted it. Very diffuse, rather large.

Seanie.

Saw it for the first time this evening. About midway between Saturn and Regulus. Easy in binos. Right on the limit for naked-eye visibility here with my skies. In the scope, it has a very small slightly siffuse nucleus. The tail is very diffuse and about 0.75 degrees long. I *thought* I saw traces of the anti-tail, but couldn't swear on it. Haze coming and going here.
Well worth a look.
Michael.

Also managed to spot it in 10 x 50 Binos last night at approx 2030 outside Clonmel. Starting to cloud in so hard to evaluate.

Donal

I tried getting looking for the comet last night, high level haze made that impossible, barely able to see regulus/saturn,

Seanie's post about pulling over in the Jeep got me to thinking: I need to take a more opportunistic approach to this one. Checking the sky to see if it's clear 2 or 3 times a night isn't going to cut it.

So I duly set up my p-mount & binos in a south-facing window, pulled up a chair, set my sketching stuff on the window cill, and sat down to wait.

Over the next hour and a half I was rewarded with 3 spells of pretty good clarity and 4 or 5 spells viewing through high thin clouds. Lulin was easy naked eye during the clarity (although appeared stellar -- no coma visible), and I'd estimate its brightness at better than mag 5.

I was able to work on some of the brighter field stars even through the high clouds, although I never got enough clear spells to plot all the dimmer ones. I worked mostly on the comet itself during them. The time listed on the sketch is when I plotted the comet's position relative to the field stars. I was working on the sketch from about 23:20 to 0:10.



Cheers,
-- Jeff.

nice sketch: cheer:

comparing with the sky on the computer, the bino field of 6 degrees is obvious! It also seems it was the best observing time, the comet was heighest in the south isn't it