December 9, 2018: Wirtanen brightening clearly

[GavStar]

Using my 95mm Baader and a 17mm Es 92 this evening, the comet was an obvious smudge. However when I popped in my night vision monoculars into the diagonal, the comet really popped out with the core being shown as a sharp white dot. A great view. Just a shame there is no clear tail...

[Paul M]

I decided to have a quick look at the sky before going to bed just before 1am and found it to have cleared considerably. Still quite poor. So I hung around to spot some Geminids and got a couple of good bright ones. That cheered me up enough to go and get my 10 x 50's.  No trouble finding the right area but nothing much there...or was there!

I left that area and looked around a bit to give my eyes a bit longer to fully adapt and went back to Taurus for another try. And there it was, big but barely discernable against the skyglow. Very subtle indeed. Oh well, it's in the bag at least. Perhaps my only chance before the weather and Moon move in. 

[bish]

Saw it last night in my 15x70's. It is in a very poor area of sky for me, and there was some thin cloud, so it must be bright to see it fairly easily. Bigger than expected. Should be able to get my scope on it next time.

[Geoff Lister]

Once the thin, high, clouds had cleared, around 21:30 last night; I found it fairly quickly last night with my 15x70s. Stellarium showed me that it was at about the same altitude as Aldebaran, and to the right of the Pleiades. Once I had found it, it was very easy to go back to it, as I was also looking at the Geminids in between times. I was using a folding garden chair, with slightly reclining back, but should have used the proper reclining patio chair. My monopod, reclining at about the same angle as my body, I was able to hold the bins with minimum shake.