November 2, 2023 – ALPO Comet News for November 2023
November sees several comets within range of small apertures. C/2023 H2 (Lemmon) will pass 0.19 au from Earth this month, possibly brightening to around 6-7th magnitude as it flies across the evening sky from Ursa Major to Grus. In the morning sky, two short-period comets are on display: 62P/Tsuchinshan as it brightens from 10th to 8th magnitude and 103P/Hartley fading from 8th to 9th magnitude.
A little fainter is inbound Halley-type comet 12P/Pons-Brooks, now being hyped in the press as the “Devil Comet.” As was the case during its last two returns in 1884 and 1954, Pons-Brooks is experiencing a series of outbursts, with the most recent major outburst occurring on October 31/November 1. November will see this northern evening comet brightening from 11th to 10th magnitude.
Last month the ALPO Comets Section received 202 observations of comets C/2023 S2 (ATLAS), C/2023 H2 (Lemmon), C/2023 E1 (ATLAS), C/2022 JK5 (PANSTARRS), C/2022 A2 (PANSTARRS), C/2021 X1 (Maury-Attard), C/2021 S4 (Tsuchinshan), C/2021 S3 (PANSTARRS), C/2020 V2 (ZTF), C/2020 K1 (PANSTARRS), C/2018 A6 (Gibbs), C/2017 K2 (PANSTARRS), 471P/2010 YK3, 358P/PANSTARRS , 279P/La Sagra, 225P/LINEAR, 212P/NEAT, 207P/NEAT, 170P/Christensen, 144P/Kushida, 126P/IRAS, 103P/Hartley, 62P/Tsuchinshan, 32P/Comas Sola, 30P/Reinmuth, 30P/Reinmuth, 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann, 12P/Pons-Brooks, and 2P/Encke. A big thanks to our August contributors: Dan Bartlett, Michel Besson, Denis Buczynski, Dan Crowson, Jose Guilherme de Souza Aguiar, Michel Deconinck, J. J. Gonzalez Suarez, Christian Harder, Carl Hergenrother, Eliot Herman, Michael Jäger, Manos Kardasis, John Maikner, Gianluca Masi, Martin Mobberley, Philippe Morel, Mike Olason, Uwe Pilz, Greg Ruppel, Chris Schur, 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.
