How to find the Comet

Every night gets better and better with Comet Holmes. I can see it clearly as a naked eye object from the parking lot of my church - heavily covered with lighting to obscure most of the stars.

Here is tonight's image through a telescope. The image was taken at 3:22 UTC, at coordinates 3h 47m 3s +50degrees 29m 54seconds through at magnification 200.

How do you find the comet? Every astronomer will give different advice, but here is mine...

You probably can find the W of Cassiopeia.

Find the two stars Gamma and Delta (which I've highlighted in the boxes below).

Use those two stars to draw a line toward Pereus (or put another way, at this time of year and in the evening sky, toward the ground). Move a little more than the length of your fist when held at arm's length (an astronomer's way of figuring out 10 degrees). You will come to a triangle of stars in Perseus.

One of the points of that triangle will be a fuzzier star - that is the comet. A pair of binoculars should show it well.

I took these last two images in the heavily light-polluted parking lot of my church - and even there the comet was clearly visible as a slightly fuzzy star-like object.

Even without a telescope, you can find it. If you have binoculars, you'll get a good view.