Admin dude, I cut my clipping from the Sydney Morning Herald and it said northern skies for Sydney, so you should be able to see it from the central coast.
I am going to try my old Canon lens adapter and 500mm mirror lens with the 300D, hopefully I'll be able to see it.
Tim, Virgo is one of the astrological constellations so will follow the ecliptic along with the other 11 'star signs' - they go pretty much overhead. I'll check an astronomy book and scan a sky chart and post up here.
Here is a link to the Sydney Observatory's blog on comet Lulin.
http://www.sydneyobservatory.com.au/blog/?p=1774, and what they had to say below:
"A relatively bright comet is approaching Earth and astronomers expect that it will be best visible in the week starting 21 February. Known officially as C/2007 N3 (Comet Lulin), it was discovered by a 19-year old university student in China in July 2007 on a photograph taken a few nights earlier at Taiwan’s Lulin Observatory. Thus apart from its intrinsic interest the comet has important political ramifications.
Events:
Saturday 21 February - Rises just before 9 pm in the east
Monday 23 February - Rises at 8:20 pm and is to the right or south of Saturn
Tuesday 24 February - Rises about 8 pm and is just above Saturn. It is at its closest to Earth at 61 million km and is at its predicted brightest.
Friday 27 February - Rises at about 7 pm, it is moving north and is likely to be staring to fade
What to expect? The paths of comets can be calculated with great precision, but their brightnesses are notoriously hard to predict. With that caveat, the prediction is that at its brightest Comet Lulin will be visible to the unaided eye from a dark sky. From cities like Sydney and Melbourne binoculars will be essential. Look for a faint patch of fuzziness.
Best nights for observation: The likely best nights are the two nights when the comet will be closest to Saturn, that is 23 and 24 February. On those nights the comet is expected to be at its brightest and will appear through a pair of binoculars in the same field of view, making it easy to find.
Happy comet hunting!"
Here are 2 charts, 1 showing where the comet is each night in February (from the US web site of Sky & Telescope - note we on the east coast of Oz are +11 hrs GMT at the moment with daylight saving), and 2 a full sky chart with Virgo overhead (8pm in July), but you add a month for each 2 hours roughly (I think) - you just need to see the pattern to see what is up there. The time to be out there is about 2-6am.
The blue pic shows the comet in realtion to the major things ion the sky (from the Syd Obs blog, it is their copyright.
