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Yay, I finally saw (and imaged) Leonos tonight. I left for work early and set up on the edge of the old Pacific Hwy at Mount White, on my way to work.
There was a spot with a good shoulder off the road and a good view to the west so I set up my EQ6, ED80 and 350D for some imaging.
I also set up Jacob's 20x80's on a tripod to help spot it. I couldn't really find it visually, especially when it was still twilight. I used Star Atlas Pro to pinpoint the location visually, and then saw the faint fuzz in the binoculars, and got the ED80 pointing to the same field, took a 10sec test exposure, and there it was - green fuzzball.
So I took a load of exposures ranging from 30-60 seconds, but I didn't polar align properly (didn't have time) so got some trailing at exposures longer than 45 seconds. It appeared that the tail mostly started to appear at longer exposures and helped when it got darker too.
By 9pm I had to pack up and get to work, and this co-incided with the comet dropping below the tree line from where I was setup. So, I finally saw it!
It was a very difficult target in binoculars - if I didn't know it was there I may not have even known it was a comet. It seems it's fading quickly.
But it is getting higher in the sky too, so it'll be visible when the sky is darker, allowing for some longer exposures. Next time I'll try to set up where I can do some auto-guiding too to get the long exposures without trailing.
Anyway, images will come later on when they're processed.
Very happy I saw it.
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