Last Sunday, 2 January 2005, I observed comet Macholz with the 7x50 and 15x80 binoculars. I observed it from my backyard (limiting magnitude was 4.7) but I could not detect it without optical aid. In the 7x50, the comet was very easy to spot. It was high in the sky, in the constellation Taurus.

Later that night I used my 15x80 binoculars mounted on the Sky Window. The comet looked like a big unresolved globular cluster: round, with a bright centre and a fading halo. Using averted vision, it looked almost twice as big. I could not detect a tail, only the core and the big halo. The sketch below was made about 22.30 UT. It should give you an idea of what I saw through the 15x80 binoculars. The two bright stars to the north are of magnitude 7 and 8. To the south, a ring of stars was visible, partially within the 3.5 field of view and partially just outside the field of view (when the comet was centred). This little “asterism” helped met to verify my observation with the maps I had printed from the comet and it’s surrounding star field using SkyTools2.