Get yourself a copy of Comet
http://www.aerith.net/project/comet.html
Ignore anything your virus/spyware scanner says about it. There is a piece of junk with the same name.
Download the "Observable comets" list from
http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/iau/Ephemerides/Soft00.html and import it into the "Comet" group. If you were interested you could follow the "Bright minor planets at opposition" link, choose the "MPC format" and import that into a new group - say "Minors"
Select "Chart" from the "Menu" menu
From the "Settings" menu
Select the comets you want to graph
The dates you want to see
Your location
From the "View" menu
Which catalog you want to use as the background. BSC5 will probably do. You'll need to download whichever ones you want.
http://www.aerith.net/project/comet/...Q.html#catalog has some links.
"View" then lets you select the FOV
At this point you should "Save Setting". There is no warning if you quit without saving. You can save multiple settings.
Clicking on objects on the chart gives you the location, and distance from the previous point.
The image is for here and shows 217P against the BSC5 from Aug 24 to Sep 24 with 45deg FOV and two popups overlaid.
You can generate an ephemeris too. Select "Menu"->"Ephemeris". You have to fill in everything again - it does not carry over from the settings you used for the chart. You can save those settings too. You need to read the view "settings" and "restrict output" pages carefully or you'll never make sense out of them.
