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This one really got me strained! But this was my successful day for
observing.
I managed to get the faint 4.51 mag Epsilon Antliae (of Antlia
constellation in South) with naked-eyes. With the 8" scope I did nothing
but star-hop 1.5 degrees to the desired location, further South. I got the
binary pair of 11th mag stars which was pointing towards the region.
At first glance, and later on with further staring nothing was visible
there. With sufficient getting accustomed to the eyepiece, I finally felt
the sensation of something very tiny and stellar, circular close to
~11-12th mag star. I had printed a very wide-field finder chart, so could
not get the magnitude of this star. This 'invisible' patch was right
beside the star, and could be estimated as same brightness.
I had to spend some 1/2 hr on this region, yet not fully confirmed!! After
2-3 hours, I looked at the region again before it got lost in lights, and
by now I had memorized the field pattern too. With sufficient staring I
could not see anything near the reference faint star, and this tiny
'patch' had moved closer (~2-4 arc mins) to another pattern of stars. I
had to finally believe I had seen the faint comet, say around 11-12th mag.
It was app was the size of Ring Nebula (1 arc minute).
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