Comet Machholz Q2

Hi All, I've had various reports that this comet is now visible naked eye under very good conditions in the Constellation Lepus at the moment and it seems to be brightning nicely icon_biggrin.gif Looks like we could have a very nice winter comet this year!

To get the latest: encke.jpl.nasa.gov/

www.aerith.net/comet/weekly/current.html

Keith.

This from Pete Lawrence in the UK, the first images I;ve seen from these latitudes of the comet
www.digitalsky.org.uk/comets/machholz.html

Sky Chart at www.irishastronomy.org/user_resources/fi...101217354-xephem.pdf

From Dec 20th: www.irishastronomy.org/user_resources/fi...587497-Macholz-2.pdf

Cheers,
~Al

That picture looks very promising, this might be a relatively bright one

Easily known I'm a novice, I was looking up into the night sky bout 11.30 I think and thought I seen a shooting star...just by orion....ah I've so much to learn... :shock:

I saw the comet for the first time last night (Tuesday, December 7th) at 11.30pm. Despite being very low in the sky, and despite me having to look out my daughter's bedroom window directly into the glaring orange glow of street lights, I found Macholtz fairly quickly with a pair of 20x80 Steiner binoculars mounted on a tripod. I couldn't do a magnitude estimate because of the conditions, and there was some cloud cover. The comet has a nice large coma, and the hint of a tail. I had a quick peep at it through slightly miscollimated 25x100s but they collected too much of the ambient town lights glow, so the view was better in the 20x80s.

We had a short notice observing session/commitee meeting tonight on Banna Strand under a foggy sky. Nice visibility overhead and about 4 degrees at 9pm. Later it cleared in patches and we found comet Macholtz low in the south east between bands of clouds.
Quite easy in 10x50 and 7x50's. Would estimate magnitude to be about 5.0 to 5.4. Difficult to be sure due to low altitude and the transient cloud. Throught the telescope it was quite difuse but big. Could not really make out any tail though.
The temprature rose to 7 degrees and even the mirror in the Dobsonian dewed over but the sky also clouded over completely.
Saturn never quite steadied enough for a good view. Lots of Geminids seen too.
Good night.

Michael Scully
KAC

Had a chance to view this with binoculars and telescope tonight at about 8-30pm in clear skies, easy to find, could not see any tail but very nice indeed, just as well because at 8-45 the clouds had rolled in
Charles