Comet Lulin

Cool!
After only catching a couple of bino-glimpses of Lulin,
I finally got a cloud free evening and had a decent look
through my 10" Starmaster tonight. It's really close to Saturn now,
having actually passed it in the last day or so.
In the bino's, they were both in the same field tonight,
but what was really fun was watching the motion of the comet in the scope,
relative to several handy background stars.
Motion was apparent after only a couple minutes, and really obvious after 10 or 15.
I hope it's clear again tomorrow night!
Linton

I had a look at Comet Lulin with my 10X50 binocs sunday (2/22/09)night from my backyard here in the city (mag 4 skies at best) - and Lulin was quite easy to find, even without a map. I had a rough idea of where it was supposed to be from my recollections of a map I had printed but lost. Despite the glare from city lights, just pointing my binoculars at the part of the sky between Saturn (located in Leo) & Spica (the brightest star in Virgo) and scanning slowly near Saturn enabled me to find it in less than 15-20 seconds. Looks like your typical cotton ball shaped comet under those conditions. I had to wait until fairly late in the evening to get a good look at it - it doesn't transit here until roughly 1:00am right now.

Will try to get my 11" Starmaster out for this, even under my big, bad city lights.

Maps of Comet Lulin's track across the sky can be found at

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/highlights/35992534.html

http://cometchasing.skyhound.com/

info about the comet at

http://cometography.com/lcomets/2007n3.html

Picture gallery at

http://spaceweather.com/comets/gallery_lulin_page8.htm

Michael Malolepszy
St. Louis Astronomical Society

It looked great saturday eve in my 18" Obsession. It was the first time since Christmas that I've been able to get it out. Bout froze my butt off.

I had a great view of Lulin on Friday night with my 17.5" dob. Best views were with 40 and 28mm eyepieces. The comet's dust tail was clearly visible and the ion tail was faint but visible on the opposite side of the coma region. Dust tail was also easily visible in 10x50 and 15x70 binoculars. The comet was visible with the naked eye, limiting magnitude in that part of the sky was about 5.8

Joplin