Image Credit: Michael Jager (via aerith.net)

C/2007 W1 (Boattini) to be more precise. We have another comet viewing opportunity coming up, in fact with a telescope it might be visible now. Seiichi Yoshida has it a magnitude 9 at the moment, however it will slowly brighten during May It will not be visible for around a month and a half starting the end of May, because it will be too close to the Sun, but when it does appear it could be a mag 5.5 or better so it might even be a faint naked eye comet. The excellent image above is by Michael Jager and was taken a couple weeks ago when the comet was still very faint – a heck of a good image.

Above is a finders chart from aerith.net, click it to get a larger version. If you haven’t check out Seiichi’s site, IMHO, the best comet site out there. Here’s the link.

The other night, I ended up doing a full reset on my scope along with a rough iterative alignment, and it seems to be functioning pretty well at the moment. Next will be another precise polar alignment and then some PEC training to get the tracking down again. Working with the scope went better than I had expected so I was pleased.

I am keeping an eye on Boattini and will keep everyone updated.