September 1, 2020 – ALPO Comet News for September 2020
The bright comets of the past few months are now fading. While C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) starts the month around 9th magnitude, both C/2017 T2 (PANSTARRS) and C/2019 U6 (Lemmon) have faded to 11-12th magnitude. Taking their place are short-period comet 88P/Howell, which comes to perihelion this month and should be 8th magnitude, and two newly discovered long-period comets, C/2020 M3 (ATLAS) and C/2020 P1 (NEOWISE). The new ATLAS comet could be a nice small telescope object over the next few months. The latest NEOWISE comet is a little more uncertain and may only become bright enough for small aperture observers in late September and early October from the southern hemisphere.
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/726880-alpo-comet-news-for-september-2020/). All are encouraged to join the discussion over at Cloudy Nights.
- Carl Hergenrother
