Context : In late 2010 a Jupiter Family comet 103P/Hartley 2 was a subject of an intensive world-wide investigation .
On UT October 20.7 the comet approached the Earth within only 0.12 AU , and on UT November 4.6 it was visited by NASA EPOXI spacecraft .

Aims : We joined this international effort and organized an observing campaign with three key goals .
First , to measure the parameters of the nucleus rotation in a time series of CN .
Second , to investigate the compositional structure of the coma by comparing the CN images with nightly snapshots of C _ { 3 } .
And third , to investigate the photochemical relation of CN and HCN , using the HCN data collected nearly simultaneously with our images .

Methods : The images were obtained through narrowband filters using the 2-m telescope of the Rozhen National Astronomical Observatory .
They were taken during 4 nights around the moment of the EPOXI encounter .
Image processing methods and periodicity analysis techniques were used to reveal transient coma structures and investigate their repeatability and kinematics .

Results : We observe shells , arc- , jet- and spiral-like patterns , very similar for the CN and C _ { 3 } comae .
The CN features expanded outwards with the sky-plane projected velocities between 0.1 to 0.3 km s ^ { -1 } .
A corkscrew structure , observed on November 6 , evolved with a much higher velocity of 0.66 km s ^ { -1 } .
Photometry of the inner coma of CN shows variability with a period of 18.32 \pm 0.30 h ( valid for the middle moment of our run , UT 2010 Nov. 5.0835 ) , which we attribute to the nucleus rotation .
This result is fully consistent with independent determinations around the same time by other teams .
The pattern of repeatability is , however , not perfect , which is understendable given the suggested excitation of the rotation state , and the variability detected in CN correlates well with the cyclic changes in HCN , but only in the active phases .
The revealed coma structures , along with the snapshot of the nucleus orientation obtained by EPOXI , let us estimate the spin axis orientation .
We obtained RA=122° , Dec=+16° ( epoch J2000.0 ) , neglecting at this point the rotational excitation .

Conclusions :