On Sun, 9 Dec 2018 12:13:29 -0800 (PST), StarDust
wrote:

On Sunday, December 9, 2018 at 6:36:56 AM UTC-8, Chris L Peterson wrote:
On Sun, 9 Dec 2018 02:18:24 -0800 (PST),
wrote:

I live in the city, major light pollution, could not see 46P with my 80mm APO, mounted on NexStar GT goto.
I know my GOTO points to the right location. I slew the scope in auto between Aldebaran and other 2 stars, like Mira back and forth, all came in to the center of my eyepiece.
Alt/Az kind of suck, coordinates all ways changing.
Day before tried it with my 50 mm bino, no luck to see it either.
Is it still hard to see this comet?

I saw it again last night, with a very thin haze in the sky. No
problem with 8x50 binoculars, but the haze prevented me from seeing it
with averted vision. Not obviously brighter than a few nights ago, but
less contrast because of the poorer sky. But still a dark sky. It's
very big, so I think it will be easily lost in any light pollution.
I'd guess your best chance is with the lowest possible magnification,
or with high enough magnification that you just get the core part of
the coma (which requires accurate pointing, of course).

How big is the comet in arc minutes?
I used my Celestron Onyx ED f6.2 and Pentax XL40 mm eyepiece, I know this combination gives me a very wide field at low power.

In my binoculars it looks about a quarter the size of the Moon. So
maybe 5-10 arcmin. Photographically I think it is now larger than the
Moon. But again, this is with no light pollution at all. Obviously, a
comet's coma has a pretty steep radial intensity gradient, so its
apparent size will be strongly influenced by the sky background.