While I won't go so far as to compare it to Hale Bopp (HB was easy naked eye while NEAT was only barely visible naked eye) I agree with everything else Debbie said. The coma is a good half degree across and with the 11x80s I could trace the fan shaped tail out to at least 4 degrees. I've a feeling NEAT is going to get a lot of attention at the public star party at SPOC tonight. Patrick UTAHDEB@aol.com wrote:

Now this is a bright comet. I went west of town under partly cloudy skies and saw it northwest of the M46-M47 clusters in Puppis. That thing is big and bright through my Oberwerk 15 X 70 binoculars. It had a respectable tail and a bright coma. I'm going to take my scope and camera tomorrow and take some photos of it.

At first I thought I had it low in the sky in the constellation Puppis but this turned out to be the bright cluster NGC 2451. I was skeptical because this didn't match the charts and then went north and found this huge bright comet in the binoculars. The magnitude is now 3.0. It seems this comet is as bright as Hale-Bopp.

Debbiee