February 23, 2022 – ALPO Comet News for February-March 2022
Summary
Well, this Comet News is either very late for February or a few days early for March. Due to delays in getting this out for February, it will cover the remainder of February and all of March.
A large number of comets are in the 8th-10th magnitude range including 19P/Borrelly, 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, 104P/Kowal, and C/2019 L3 (PANSTARRS) in the evening and C/2017 K2 (PANSTARRS) and C/2021 F1 (Lemmon-PANSTARRS) in the morning sky. On a bit of the fainter side are receding 4P/Faye and 6P/d’Arrest, incoming C/2019 T4 (ATLAS) and C/2021 E3 (ZTF), and two short-period comets at perihelion 9P/Tempel and 22P/Kopff. After spending a few weeks too close to the Sun for observation, last year’s comet highlight, C/2021 A1 (Leonard), should reappear as a fainter object of ~11-12th magnitude but only for observers in the southern hemisphere.
Since January 1, the ALPO Comets Section has received 111 magnitude estimates and 61 images and sketches of comets C/2022 A1 (Sárneczky), C/2021 O3 (PANSTARRS), C/2021 F1 (Lemmon-PANSTARRS), C/2021 A1 (Leonard), C/2020 V2 (ZTF), C/2019 U5 (PANSTARRS), C/2019 T4 (ATLAS), C/2019 L3 (ATLAS), C/2017 K2 (PANSTARRS), 430P/Scotti, 116P/Wild, 104P/Kowal, 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann, 19P/Borrelly, 6P/d’Arrest and 4P/Faye. Observations were contributed by Paul G. Abel, Dan Bartlett, Michel Besson, Denis Buczynski, John Chumack, Michel Deconinck, Lukas Demetz, J. J. Gonzalez, Christian Harder, Jan Hattenbach, Carl Hergenrother, Eliot Herman, Michael Jäger, Gianluca Masi, Martin Mobberley, Michael Olason, Uwe Pilz, Ludovic Prebet, Raymond Ramlow, Tenho Tuomi, and Chris Wyatt.
In addition to observations submitted directly to the ALPO, we occasionally use data from other sources to augment our analysis. We would like to acknowledge with thanks observations submitted directly to the ALPO as well as those originally submitted to the International Comet Quarterly, Minor Planet Center, and COBS Comet Observation Database. We would also like to thank the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for making available their Small-Body Browser and Orbit Visualizer and Seiichi Yoshida for his Comets for Windows programs that are used to produce the lightcurves and orbit diagrams in these pages. And last but not least, we’d like to thank Syuichi Nakano and the Minor Planet Center for their comet orbit elements, the asteroid surveys and dedicated comet hunters for their discoveries, and all of the observers who volunteer their time to adding to our knowledge of these amazing objects.
The monthly ALPO Comet News PDF can be found here. A shorter version of this report is posted on a dedicated Cloudy Nights forum. All are encouraged to join the discussion over at Cloudy Nights.
- Carl Hergenrother
