As we all hoped would be the case, comet C/2021 A1 Leonard is looking very pretty now the Moon has moved out of the way and stopped flooding the morning sky with its silvery light.

Last night was clear across much of the UK, and many stargazers and sky-watchers (including me) took advantage of the frosty morning to get out and take a look at the comet, and photograph it too. They found that the comet has brightened considerably in a week, and is now really easy to photograph with even basic equipment. It is not bright enough to be seen with the naked eye yet, but is visible in binoculars and small telescopes as a small, out-of-focus star with a short, faint tail behind it. It must be a lovely sight in larger instruments by now, too.

This morning the comet was to the north of the globular star cluster M3, as you can see from this image I took, using a 300mm lens set at 200mm, a Canon 700D DSLR and a sky tracking mount…

Tomorrow morning the comet will be much closer to the cluster, so if your sky is clear around 4am in the morning you should definitely get out there and try to see it, especially if you haven’t seen it yet.