Plan away....it is not too early and you need to be aware of:

1) very low horizons are needed to see and photograph this;
2) the comet will set very early in twilight
3) assess the angle of the comet setting from your location to assure no trees, lights, etc.

Doc

Not a dumb question at all.....it is frustration and coincidence, plain and simple.
There is no "good reason" that all the good comets have been south of us, but sometimes things happen like that.
Note that PANSTARRS (2011 L4) will be reaching high into the evening sky at dusk in two weeks....then later this month ISON (2012 S1) will be very high in the sky througout December for northern observers and likely will be the comet of a lifetime should all prognostications hold true.....then the southern observers will be wondering:  "Why North?"

Doc

I remember in 1969 out on dark sky outing with friends having a Messier Marathon All-Nighter; there were five of us as I remember and we logged 81 of the 105 Messier objects in one night visually, using setting circles and flashlights.  No computers and no GO TOs.

Fun, but there is some degree of exhaustion that memory still seems to hold as dawn broke that morning.

Doc

Pretty nice for forgotten stash, Ron.  Very nice pinpoint stars, and thanks for reminding everyone of the free stacking program; there are very few that work well with Alt Az configuration.

Doc

Hi Ed....these days star parties in Arkansas are few and far between; Wooly Hollow State Park outside of Conway has regular star parties several times each year and that would be your best bet to contact them.
Note that I am planning a big star party up here in December when Comet ISON blazes across the sky, so stay tuned.

Welcome aboard and keep posting!

Doc

YOU HAVE to watch these....unbelievable impact on earth
This happened in Russia less than 24 hours ago.  Let these videos load; all the
important ones are on this ONE link.

http://say26.com/meteorite-in-russia-all-videos-in-one-place

This coincidentally is happening only 20 hours before the close pass of the
asteroid by Earth tonight, hopefully unrelated.

Dr. Clay
_____
Arkansas Sky Observatories
MPC H45 - Petit Jean Mountain South
MPC H41 - Petit Jean Mountain
MPC H43 - Conway West
http://www.arksky.org/

That is terrific and thanks for the update.
I hope that you enjoy the program.
We use it for all of our NEO and comet observing programs at ASO and have come to depend on it; could not do without MPECsort!

Doc

Dave is correct that you must have the Crystal Reports and .net framework loaded (v2.0 or higher).
Once done, make sure that COMETS are selected under the EDIT/OPTIONS tab; if no other objects are desired, leave those unchecked.
Now, that being said you must carefully select your RA (beginning and ending) and DEC parameters.  For example, here at ASO right now they are set to (RA) "23 to 15" and (DEC) -18 to +90; magnitude limit 20.5.

There is likely a default set improperly if you do have the Crystal Reports and .net installed with this (use both links on the program download page for MPECsort for the correct versions of these ancillary programs).

Keep trying and keep us up on your progress.

Doc

Great documentation Ron and thanks for posting this.
Although easy targets when you have few stars to compare with, they will be tough in standard binoculars to find.  If you do happen to spot them and then try to show someone else where they are relative to the stars in a binocular field, "good luck" because it is really hard to tell someone exactly where to look in binoculars.

Hope your big star party is a success; with a low up here last night at 17 degrees, we would have very few attendees in Arkansas.

Doc

So every bit of the color adjustment is done post-imaging and is all digital from the computer?
I think that you will get this technique down pretty well....excellent effort.

Doc

Very good results; how are you processing out the PINK sky glow?

Doc

Honestly I think that I like this unstacked image better...although I do think that you should try wide field stacking and see what kind of results you are able to get.

Doc

Indeed welcome, and I find it very interesting that Ron found the answer through the months to be the exact suggestion posted.
Good minds, as they say....

Doc

Interesting idea to stack on wide field images.  I see a great possibility here, just as in narrow field deep sky imaging.
Not sure if it is my eyes, the seeing or the setting on the camera lens, but it appears that the fainter star images are not sharp.
Could this be from the stacking process?

Interesting and I look forward to some more....

Doc

Very nice shot, Ron; my brother who lives about 40 east of here got the conjunction as well with his camera and telephoto.
Great contrast on your shot.

Doc