> Thank you everyone :) 2007 has been a good year with two lifetime
> astronomy goals finally achieved. The first goal was to see a
> daylight comet and the second to discover a comet - mission
> accomplished!
>
> I use 2 Digital SLR cameras to image the sky, and then process the
> images using IRIS then examine them using the blink technique on a
> computer monitor. After a very intense search effort in 2006 without
> success (one near miss with 2006M4), I had wound back my efforts in
> 2007 (partly because of 2006P1 and partly because of fatigue!). March
> 15 was only the second time this year I had done any searches in the
> morning sky. While downloading images from the camera on March 15 I
> noticed a cometary object at the edge of 16 raw images centred at RA
> 20h57m DEC -51d 18m made between 17h22m and 17h46m UT. Normally, the
> raw unprocessed images show only the brightest objects so I was very
> suprised that this could be an undiscovered comet. At first I though
> it was simply a bright deep sky object, but after processing the the
> intense telltale green hue and generally morphology strongly
> suggested comet. Additionally, when I blinked the processed images
> it showed small but clear motion. Astrometry quickly revealed no
> known object in that location. At this point I was very sure I had
> something :)
>
> The following day there was an agonising wait for cometrise (about
> midnight from my location) and I notified a number of people for
> followup observations. John Drummond being located further east had
> the first opportunity to see the comet. Sure enough John phoned me
> to confirm the existence of the comet around 11pm local time. Its
> the first time I have spoken to John and what a way to introduce
> yourself! Dan green contacted me late on March 16 UT to advise me
> that the comet had been announced, but as per standard procedure the
> comet would not be named until an orbit was calculated and it was
> determined the comet was not an existing named one.
>
> All told I estimate I have examined about 1000 image fields since
> late 2004, which would equate to about 1000 hours (it takes me 10
> minutes to actually examine an image, but there are other time
> consuming tasks like setup/development/identifying suspect objects,
> etc). Unfortunately I don't keep records on time taken and images
> examined.
>
> Rob McNaught informs me that unusually cloudy weather has severly
> hampered coverage of the Siding Springs survey. Additionally, I
> also checked SWAN this morning and the last posted image is February
> 18. Moonlight problably explained why visual observers hadn't got to
> the comet first.
>
> Here are some of my images of the comet (including the discovery set):
>
> [link to www.pbase.com]
>
> Terry
>