Last chance from Siding Spring for a dark sky view till the evening
of Jan 12.

The comet was *very* difficult to the naked eye, but 5 degrees of tail
was visible to averted vision. As Michael said, it is now only the
head end that is visible. I had suspicions of a tail going out to
around 20 degrees, but a line of 4 stars including alpha, theta and
eta Cha were either in or close to what I was suspecting. My photos
show a 21 deg tail running a bit to the north of these stars, so
perhaps it was visible. Blinking the photos might reveal a longer
tail still.

Using 7x50B was little advantage, the tail only becoming visible by
sweeping them back and forward across the tail. I foolishly didn't
have my opera glasses with me to test them on the tail.

Guess there won't be much chance of a naked eye view of the comet
on Jan 12, so vale comet Lovejoy, it's been an exciting few weeks.
And congratulations once more to Terry for giving us all such a
wonderful surprise.

Cheers, Rob

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Robert H. McNaught
Uppsala Telescope/Siding Spring Survey
Australian National University
Siding Spring Observatory
Coonabarabran, NSW 2357
Australia

P: +61 2 6842 6260
F: +61 2 6842 6240

SSS Webpage: http://msowww.anu.edu.au/~rmn/
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