An IAU Circular issued a bit ago notes that observations similar to the ones being done at Lowell, but by Carl Hergenrother using the 1.5-m Kuiper telescope in the Catalinas shows the brightening (about 2 magnitudes in the R band) was confined to the seeing-disc of the pseudo-nucleus within a few arcsec radius of the center. A good visual comet observer, Mike Linnolt, reports on the same IAUC, an increase in total brightness of only ~0.5 mag through the event, going from about 11.2 before to 10.7 afterwards. The gist of the data indicates that reports of the nucleus going to mag 9 are incorrect, and suggestions of a substantial change in the total brightness of the comet, including (ahem) mine, are also overstated. The action was confined to the immediate nuclear region not much larger than a star in a telescope. \Brian -- See message header for info on list archives or unsubscribing, and please send personal replies to the author, not the list.