I was out with an observing buddy at our regular dark-sky site last night, and we managed to get some really good views of PanSTARRS.
I did spot it around mid-March... But last night was far better, even though it's now down to about magnitude 4.8.
Now that it's further from the Sun, it's possible to see it a good couple of hours after sunset, so the sky behind it is much darker, and it stands out significantly better.
Sunset was about 7:45 last night, and we met up as usual, about 15 mins after sunset - I took an 8" SCT telescope with me, and 20x80 binoculars (tripod-mounted) - my mate also had binocs of the same size, and an 8" Newtonian reflector telescope.
We went through our usual routine of setting the scopes up - then a bit of a chat, and a cuppa from a thermos, while the scopes cooled to ambient temperature - by about 8:45 it was dark enough to see Polaris, and polar-align our mounts - then after spending 15 mins or so on Jupiter, the sky to the NW was dark enough to see a few stars near the horizon.
Earlier in the day I'd looked up the comet's position, and knew where it should be - so starting from the easiest visible nearby star (Mirach, in Andromeda) - panned the binocs to the right, going past the star 'nu andromedae', then between 'mu' and '32' andromedae, (the usual way I star-hop to the Andromeda galaxy) - then from the galaxy, down and to the right a little to where the comet should be - At first, and just for a second, all I registered was an unfamiliar star coming in at the edge of the binoculars' field of view - then as it tracked into the middle of the view, that 'star' looked fuzzy, and the tail swam into view.
"Got it", I said to my mate - who was still looking at Jupiter in his 'scope' - This would be just after 9pm.
The view was roughly comparable to the view I'd had a few weeks ago - but tonight I had a reasonable-sized scope with me, and the next job was to get it in the scope.
I popped in a 40mm wide-angle eyepiece, to give me 50x magnification, and a true field of about 1.4º, and homed in on it with the scope.
With the light-grasp of the scope it was absolutely beautiful, and the fan-shaped tail stretched almost all the way acoss the field of view.
We stayed until after midnight, and kept coming back to PanSTARRS, in between looking at other things - The views of the comet gradually got better and better, peaking at about 10:30, when the NW sky was darker than it had been earlier, and just before the comet dipped too low into the murk that you always get just above the horizon. It was visible to the naked eye by then - even though it's now at almost 5th magnitude.
In the binoculars, both the Andromeda galaxy, and the comet could fit in the same field of view, with the galaxy at upper left, and the comet at lower right, with the tail fanning upwards across the view - wonderful sight.
I'm now hoping that we get a clear sky one night between the 18th and 23rd of April, as it passes through Cassiopeia, close to some of my favourite star clusters