Comet McNaught

Hi- I just came down from my deck after observing this comet with my 20x110 binos. It is very low on the western horizon, but looked great. It showed a bright nucleus and a short tail. All this was observed in middle to late twilight and thru the Scottsdale, Phoenix, and west valley light dome. I can only imagine how good this would look from a really dark site. It has to be -2 mag by my guess. When it comes to perihelion in a few days my guess is that we should all be on the lookout for a daylight comet.
Regards
Keith Parizek

Good evening. I was looking with 7x56 binoes a while ago. I saw a little streak of light, which was oriented correctly, but I could not differentiate a nucleus and tail. I thought it must have been a little remnent of contrail reflecting sunset colors, but in hindsight I'll bet that was it.
I stayed at it for another half hour, as the stars came out and darkness fell. I was scanning around in between Venus and Altair, but as I refer back to a chart now, I see I was not looking low enough. The comet had already set.
I will try again tomorrow and take my TV-85 along.
Thanks for your report.
Linton

I just observed Comet McNaught from 5:58PM to 6:09PM CST. It was a fantastic sight; I would definitely say it is the brightest comet I’ve seen since West in 1976. Once I first spotted it in my 15X70 binoculars it was an easy naked eye object for around 5 minutes. At the end of my observing window I could still see some tail even though the comet was 0.5° above the horizon!

Tom