I carried my 11x70 to the top of our dormitory at around 14:50 UT. The sky condition has improved significantly compare to that of the morning (overcast), but it's still mostly cloudy, with a few bright stars occasionary visible in the cloud gaps, I estimated the LM to be around +1.0 at that moment, one of the worst observing nights I have ever experienced. However I still manage to spot the comet. At around 15:05 UT, a clear region was passing over the Lulin region, so I point my binocular to the southeast direction of Saturn. I move the observing field a little bit and feel that there is a small "cloud" near a curve lined by four stars. A very clear gap was just passing the region and I was able to confirm its existances. A 7.46 mag. star coded TYC 267-888-1 was also visible at those seconds, so I estimated the surface brightness of the comet to be around 7.5 mag, with a diameter up to around 20'. The cloud came again after less than half a minute and was increasing again, after waiting for five minutes I packed my binocular and went downstairs.

I'm very pleased to find the comet is such a bad condition, but I think experiences are required under such a condition. Also I need to point out that the brightness estimation is far from reliable since the sky condition is far from satisfying.

I should have wait for more time but today I'm very tired. I think I must go to bed now or I may catch a cold. Good luck to you all!

Update: I just receive a fresh image from Lulin Observatory, taken by the Lulin 10-cm f/8 refractor with U9000 CCD last night (300s x 5 combined). The comet looks really gorgeous! Note its newly-developed beautiful dust tail! After earning their permission to publicaze the image on my blog, I'm showing it here. Well, I just bound up my hair for a few hours last night and the comet soon made a response? (the comet looks very different now comparing the images prior to Feb. 22, you may browse spaceweather.com for a comparasion) Bravo, fantastic. I'll depart soon for Gaocun Village, a remote site about 150 kilometers from Guangzhou which is one of the bases of our Guangdong Southern Cross Star Association, for a good view of the comet. Stay tuned for updates.

Image by H. Y. Hsiao, used with permission

Image by H. Y. Hsiao, used with permission

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