Hi,

Despite large scale pre summer burn offs and their associated smoke hazards, I found a spot at the top of the Waverly Reservoirs at dawn to see if I could spot the Nishimura Comet on what I understand is potentially it's last Earth fly buy.

The Waverly Reservoirs are at the top of the hill that runs down to Bondi Beach. Facing east , I should have been able to see the comet, however the thick red layer of smoke seemingly obscured everything except the larger present heavenly bodies, including Saturn (not in the picture) in the zenith along with the crescent moon and venus just above the eastern horizon.

Interestingly the green of a comet could potentially be filtered/effected by the foreground red of the sun drunk smoke and the blue haze that airborne ecyliptus oil creates, as in the Blue Mountains. If you look in the bottom right section you can see an object in the haze. I didn't notice it until I was viewing at a higher resolution than onsite.

If anyone can figure out if it is the comet or not, please let me know. The coordinates of the photo are below.

I have a much higher res version of the supplied image as well as other images in taken at the site if you are interested in viewing them.

Reference:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waverley_Reservoirs - -33.89469243061584, 151.25698947601094

Best regards

Nick King

Canon Digital

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