In this day and age of high-powered surveys, e.g., Pan-STARRS, it seemed like the amateur comet discoverer had gone the way of the horse and buggy. However, in the case of Comet C/2018 V1 (Machholz-Fujikawa-Iwamoto), we have three human co-discoverers. The human comet hunter needs to work areas of the sky that the surveys can't or don't.
The first person cited in the appellation, Don Machholz, is not only an amateur with eleven prior discoveries (the last in 2010), but he discovered this one and the others
visually with a telescope. He was the first to sight and report the subject comet, while the other two are Japanese fellows who found it independently photographically.
Bob King has an
article about C/2018 V1 (M-F-I) at Sky & Telescope online.
Currently, this comet is readily accessible to observers before, or during the early throes of morning twilight (weather permitting). It's now a few degrees from Porrima (Gamma Virginis). Current estimates put it around magnitude 7.x.
I saw it on Sunday morning, 11-Nov-2018, with 15x56 binoculars, and then with my 85 mm spotting scope, from Carranza Field in the Pines, about half-an-hour before the start of astronomical twilight. This morning, Monday, 12-Nov-2018, I saw it from my semi-suburban location, Swede Run in Moorestown, NJ, with the 85 mm spotting scope, but not the binoculars. Swede Run is not nearly as dark as the Pines (I saw a slight wash oz Zodiacal Light on Sunday morning at Carranza), plus I got going a bit late this morning, so I didn't start looking until after astronomical twilight had begun at 5:08 am EST.
So we now have at least three accessible comets to view. They are C/2018 V1 as described above, 64P/Swift-Gehrels in Andromeda and 46P/Wirtanen in Fornax. I saw the latter two from Atsion, in Wharton State Forest, NJ, on Saturday evening, 10-Nov-2018, both with my 12.5-inch dob. There may be a fourth, 38P/Stephan-Oterma in Gemini, for which I haven't yet made an effort. Hopefully, the weather will provide an opportunity before the waxing moon encroaches.
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