C/2014 Q1 panSTARRS comet

[Essex nightsky]

Just read here>> http://www.universetoday.com/116461/the-top-101-astronomical-events-to-watch-for-in-2015/

That on June 16th comet c/2014 Q1 panSTARRS may reach naked eye visibility.

Wanted to image Lovejoy but hadn't gathered all the components to my rig (or enough experience at that), anyway now I'm ready to give it a go but was wondering if anybody has been observing it recently? Do you have an estimation of magnitude?

[Knight of Clear Skies]

Hi, here's a current list of viewable comets on Heavens Above. Lovejoy is still the brightest visible from the northern hemisphere but is fading.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Just looked at the charts, but it is going to be terribly close to the sun (in terms of line of sight). I do not think it is going to be visible

[Tonk]

A good resource to get charts and tables of visibility is Skyhound's Comet Chasing website

http://cometchasing.skyhound.com/

If you look there it has a visibility table for various latitudes (Northern and Southern). For June is not visible on any night at latitude 55N. The best viewing location is at the equator early in June - so basically its in the process of going into conjunction with the sun this month.

If you check out the solar elongation by date values for the comet here - http://cgi.minorplanetcenter.net/cgi-bin/returnprepeph.cgi?d=c&o=CK14Q010 - then you will see that conjunction is reach on 4th July when its is approx. 10 degrees from the sun. Then it will be at max brightness of an estimated mag 3.5 but too close to the sun to observe well.

The comet last came out of solar conjunction in March  (< 4 degrees) and reached a max elongation of 27degress on 26th May and is now closing in on the sun again and by the time it again reaches a good elongation its a southern hemisphere comet and rapidly fading (e.g mag 9 in mid August and 45 degrees from the sun and at a declination of -23 - well south of the sun)