June 3, 2020 – ALPO Comet News for June 2020
2020 has been an up and down year for comet watching. It has already seen two comets, touted as the next big thing, fall apart well before perihelion. While observations of the remains of C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS) and C/2020 F8 (SWAN) are possible this month, most of our attention turns to other brightening comets. C/2019 U6 (Lemmon) may peak around magnitude 6 at the end of June and C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) should brighten to around magnitude 7 before it is lost in the Sun’s glare. Both of those comets are visible only from the southern hemisphere. Northern observers still have fading C/2017 T2 (PANSTARRS) at around 8-9th magnitude.
The monthly ALPO Comet News PDF can be found here. Note with all of the recent comet activity, this report is a bit large in size. A shorter version of this report is posted on a dedicated Cloudy Nights forum (https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/710865-alpo-comet-news-for-june-2020/). All are encouraged to join the discussion over at Cloudy Nights.
- Carl Hergenrother
