I just know that I had a near-miss to my second comet discovery in late 2007, since the Minor Planet Center has just reported the identification made by Mike Meyer, that three observations I made in late 2007 was actually linked with a recent discovered comet, but that's largely caused by bad luck instead of careless review of candidates -- see above.

This tiny snow ball, is now recognized as Comet McNaught, designed P/2008 Y3, it was found at the New Year's Eve of 2009 by Australian astronomer Rob McNaught. I had received a warm welcome by Rob during my visit to the Siding Spring Observatory, and he gave me a beautiful post of the Great Daylight Comet he found (C/2006 P1), as well as his signature and words, "May you discovered more comets!" However, he has taken one from my hand Oops, Rob, I'm not blaming you -- because it was still two months before you wrote the words when I detected it, we were both not aware of such an occasion being presenting.

The self-developed reduction pipeline did detected the faint dot although it was then running through the milky way, and was "encounted" with a bright star (the encounted image was neglected when making the image you see). As the comet was then about 3.94 a.u. from the Earth (about 590 million kilometers), the cometary feature was rather weak, so it's not surprising for me to count it as an asteroid at that time. Anyway, congratulations for your 45th comet, Rob! (Yes, Rob is the most profit individual discoverer in the history by far)

Rob McNaught (right) and me in front of the Uppsala Dome, Siding Spring Observatory