Daniel wrote:

I saw comet 2007E2 (Lovejoy) to the north near the head of Draco using a 17.5 inch dob. It was ninth mag and as large and diffuse. The core was just distinguishable from the coma but it had no tail, it was perfectly round. It rises in the east and is high at midnight.

While at the weekly Wednesday night U of U Asto Club Star Party, I tried without success to find C2007E2 with their 12" and their 14" Meade SCTs from the light polluted South Physics Building roof. After the star party, I drove to Little Mtn in an attempt to see the comet with 10 x 50 binos from a site with less light pollution. At the time, I was unable to locate it, but after rechecking charts at home, it appears I was looking at it. The comet is around mag 9 but the coma is so small that it appears stellar like. Most ICQ reports - which are outdated April reports - have never put the comet at greater in diameter than 8 arcmins. I suspect it is much smaller than this now. Comet Lovejoy appeared as a quasi-stellar object in the "kite asterism" on this chart. http://members.csolutions.net/fisherka/astronote/finder/C2007E2LoveJoyAsteri... But, as Daniel proves it may be a nice object in a very large apeture. C2007E2's position at 11 pm local time for the next days, ending with the return of the Moon on the 19th, are listed below. A finder chart I threw together is at: http://members.csolutions.net/fisherka/astronote/finder/C2007E2LoveJoy10Day.... UTC Date-Time RA Dec Alt Az 2007-May-11 05:00 16 51 50.71 +56 26 25.0 46.6650 48.1729 2007-May-12 05:00 16 42 36.57 +57 36 32.1 45.0277 50.0257 2007-May-13 05:00 16 33 21.91 +58 39 07.7 43.3247 51.7478 2007-May-14 05:00 16 24 09.13 +59 34 44.3 41.5550 53.3454 2007-May-15 05:00 16 15 00.60 +60 23 53.8 39.7178 54.8247 2007-May-16 05:00 16 05 58.64 +61 07 07.1 37.8130 56.1914 2007-May-17 05:00 15 57 05.41 +61 44 53.6 35.8414 57.4508 2007-May-18 05:00 15 48 22.94 +62 17 41.4 33.8044 58.6078 2007-May-19 05:00 15 39 53.00 +62 45 57.4 31.7046 59.6670 - Kurt _______________________________________________ Sent via CSolutions - http://www.csolutions.net