November 2, 2022 – ALPO Comet News for November 2022
November is sort of a transition month. For northern observers, we lost C/2017 K2 (PANSTARRS) and C/2022 P1 (NEOWISE). Even down south, K2 is becoming a more difficult object to observe as it approaches conjunction. And we await next year’s bright comets, C/2020 V2 (ZTF) and C/2022 E3 (ZTF), which are just on the verge of being bright enough for most small aperture observers.
November sees the return of two comets that dropped out of last month’s focus. 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann was supposed to be faint at 14-15th magnitude but a recent outburst has it back at 10-11th magnitude. C/2019 L3 (ATLAS) has recently been re-observed and is still a 10th magnitude object.
Rounding out the comets expected to be brighter than 12th magnitude this month are two short-period comets, 81P/Wild and 118P/Shoemaker-Levy. Both will be around 11th magnitude.
Last month the ALPO Comets Section received 76 magnitude estimates and 33 images/sketches of comets C/2022 R2 (ATLAS), C/2022 P1 (NEOWISE), P/2022 L3 (ATLAS), C/2022 E3 (ZTF), C/2021 Y1 (ATLAS), C/2021 X1 (Maury-Attard), C/2021 T4 (Lemmon), C/2021 QM45 (PANSTARRS), C/2021 E3 (ZTF), C/2020 Y2 (ATLAS), C/2020 V2 (ZTF), C/2020 S4 (PANSTARRS), C/2020 K1 (PANSTARRS), C/2019 O3 (Palomar), C/2019 L3 (ATLAS), C/2017 K2 (PANSTARRS), 404P/Bressi, 327P/Van Ness, 244P/Scotti, 150P/LONEOS, 117P/Helin-Roman-Alu, 81P/Wild, 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann, 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann, 22P/Kopff, 12P/Pons-Brooks, and 2P/Encke. A big thanks to our recent contributors: Dan Bartlett, Denis Buczynski, J. J. Gonzalez, Jose Guilherme de Souza Aguiar, Christian Harder, Carl Hergenrother, Eliot Herman, John Maikner, Martin Mobberley, Uwe Pilz, Tenho Tuomi, and Chris Wyatt.
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.
