UKC

Just been watching it. Appears as a green smudgy blob through my birdwatching telescope, and took a few sloe gins and a large whisky to spot it - not as easy as people were saying. The two shooting stars were ace though! Defo need bins or telescope.

In reply to mick taylor:

Thanks for this post - I didn't know about this. I'll have to have a nose on my nights off -skies permitting.

In reply to Skipinder:
Find Alderbaran (orange star at the end of the curve traced rightwards through orions belt), then find the cluster Pleiades to its
right. Draw a line between these 2 and make this line the base of an upside down isosceles triangle. The comet is at the point of this triangle, the other two sides being a bit longer than the base.

In reply to mick taylor:

Hopefully I can get some clear skies over the weekend

In reply to mick taylor:

it's quite a pleasant sight through binoculars. I'm hoping for a dry evening sometime to get my scope out so I can photograph it.

In reply to mick taylor:

I got a couple of good shots of it at the end of last week
50mm field of view: https://www.flickr.com/photos/77393937@N02/16318645592
200mm field of view https://www.flickr.com/photos/77393937@N02/16293579056

Sadly not the darkest of skies in rural Guildfordshire but pleasing images nonetheless. The tail is quite faint (against the light pollution) so the histogram is heavily abused to bring it out.

Here is a good write up
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/observing-news/spot-comet-lov...

In reply to richard_hopkins:

Wow!! That 200mm shot is fantastic.
Was the camera piggyback mounted on an equatorial scope? What was the exposure ?

In reply to mick taylor:

Through my binos all I could see was a feint blurr. Through my birding scope just a larger blur. However at least I can claim I spotted it in the southern sky.

In reply to sbc_10:
Thanks for the comments.
I used to piggyback the camera on my telescope (which had alt az mount) but tried an Ioptron Skytracker and it had more accurate tracking and as an equatorial mount, doesn't suffer from field rotation and I've never put the camera on the telescope since! At 200mm, I think I could push 2 minute exposures on a windless day. 50mm will go to 5 minutes OK but the sky isn't dark enough here. The mount is very portable, and much less expensive than a full telescope mount. I look forward to going out camping somewhere a bit darker and taking the camera one weekend!

That image was from last Thursday and it was very windy so I'm pleased with that. It was made with 40 30 second images stacked, but the comet is very clear in a single 30 second exposure.

Here's the mount:
http://www.ioastronomy.com/product/ioptron-uk-skytracker-3302w-combo

The lens is an old Nikon AIS 200mm F4 prime on Nikon D5300. Hardly in the same league as a dedicated APO telescope, but very useable and common on ebay.
I time the exposures with a bargain MC-36b Nikon knockoff timer from China (about 1/8th the price of the real Nikon timer and works with their modern cameras unlike the genuine timer...)

In reply to richard_hopkins:

Fantastic photos - its good to see what the green smudge I was looking at actually looks like!

In reply to mick taylor:

Tried and failed again to see it last night about 8pm. Milky way was forming so my excuse is there were too many bloody stars!!
Still lovely night to be out