Group photo of some participants of the Lulin campaign at the Gaocun Village observing field

Group photo of some participants of the Lulin campaign at the Gaocun Village observing field

After the Lulin observing compaign on Feb. 24/25, my tireness of long travel, preparation of the new term operning and many other things stacked and made my bad cold intensified into the worst bad cold I have ever experienced in past ten years. I feel sleepy everywhere, unable to recall something quickly, even unaware of what I'm doing. I think I need a good rest this weekend. If the recovery is not significant, I may need to go to the doctor's.

Although I was feeling very bad last night, I still carried my binocular and tripod with the help from Sisi Chen to the top of laboratory's building for Lulin. The sky was good for a downtown-based field -- with LM around 2.0-2.5, cirrus on. I spent a little bit longer to find the comet -- about a minute I think. Cirrus occasionary went over the region and we had to pause. Under heavy light pollution, I estimated the brightness of Lulin to be about 5.0 mag. with a coma at about 20', the tail was faint in the background, I measured several times and confirmed it's about 1 deg long. Although not formally trained before, Sisi recorgnize the comet with ease, and she could detected the tail too. Very sharp eyes!

I should stay there longer for the view, but I had to go to bed, so I forced myself to go back to dormitory at around 22:50. Comet may indeed bring bad fortune like sickness, but Lulin shouldn't -- the cause of the bad cold maybe, like 85P/Boethin? Its period is 11.5 years so it fits the fact for this 10-year worst bad cold ;-) Thankfully the cloud comes up tonight so I can sleep early. The moonson season is coming, but in early March I will pay a short visit to Beijing and Tianjin, so there are still chances to see Lulin!