THE COMET’S TALE Newsletter of the Comet Section of the British Astronomical Association Volume 9, No 2 (Issue 18), 2002 October ASTEROIDS, COMETS AND METEORS 2002 Astronomers from all over the on this occasion he was doing of a comet brightening in this world gathered together in Berlin some casual star-gazing after a region. at the end of July for the triennial spell of bad weather. Fortunately Asteroids, Comets and Meteors he was able to recognise the Another development that was conference. The ACM series interloper and report his find. announced at the meeting is an began in 1983 in Uppsala, moving This was the first comet discovery exciting project called to the US in 1991 then alternating from Germany since 1946 and PanSTARRS, planned by the between the new and old world. drew a generous round of University of Hawaii. This will This year, in total there were 452 applause. search virtually all the northern astronomers from 34 countries, sky (except the pole) to with 22 from the UK, ranking us Also discovered during the th magnitude 24 (getting this faint in in 7 place well behind the USA conference was comet 2002 O6, less than a minute), three times a (105) and Germany (77). The which was the first real-time month. There may be four majority were professionals, discovery from the SOHO SWAN telescopes, each of 1.8-m aperture although there were a few instrument, which scans the sky in and capable of reaching the amateurs as well. the ultra-violet. Confirmation magnitude limit within a minute over a 3° field. Each frame will be around a billion pixels giving a huge flow of data at around 2 Tb a night. There will be a NEO (Near Earth Object) in every other frame and it may discover 100 comets a month, with the chance of seeing some interstellar ones. Comets will be confirmed in real time as the resolution is around 0.6", far better than existing programmes. It will discover around 10,000 KBOs (Kuiper Belt Objects) in the first year and 600,000 asteroids a night. It will put the supernova searchers out of business too, as it will detect new objects as well as moving objects and find perhaps 100,000 a year. The project is funded to the tune of $40M and is likely to be on line within a few years. The problem Sebastian Hoenig, Maik Meyer and Brian from ground based observers will be following up all the Marsden discuss SOHO comets in the made this only the second SOHO objects it discovers and providing Stadthall of the Technical University of discovered comet to be observed linkages between the moving Berlin. from the ground. This discovery objects. perhaps sounds the death knell for Continued on page 5 Many exciting developments were amateur comet discoveries. Contents reported, including the discovery Between the SOHO LASCO and of comet 2002 O4 (Hoenig), SWAN instruments and LINEAR Comet Section contacts 2 which was discovered by and future search programmes Section news 2 Sebastian Hoenig from there is little sky left for the Tales from the past 3 Heidelberg on July 22. Full moon amateur to search. There is Professional tales 3 intervened and it wasn't until July perhaps a small band running ACM2002 (Cont) 5 29 that the discovery was finally about 8° north of the ecliptic to Review of observations 13 confirmed. It was an accidental around 50° from the Sun in the Edgar Wilson Award 23 discovery, and although Sebastian evening sky, which SWAN has done some comet searching, cannot see, and there is a chance Predictions for 2003 23 BAA COMET SECTION NEWSLETTER 2 THE COMET’S TALE Comet Section contacts Director: Jonathan Shanklin, 11 City Road, CAMBRIDGE. CB1 1DP, England. Phone: (+44) (0)1223 571250 (H) or (+44) (0)1223 221400 (W) Fax: (+44) (0)1223 221279 (W) or (+44) (0) 1223 571250 (H) E-Mail: [email protected] or [email protected] Antarctic e-mail: [email protected] WWW page : http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/~jds/ Assistant Director (Observations): Guy Hurst, 16 Westminster Close, Kempshott Rise, BASINGSTOKE, Hampshire. (and also Editor of RG22 4PP, England. The Astronomer magazine) Phone & Fax: (+44) (0)1256 471074 E-Mail: [email protected] or [email protected] CCD Advisor: Nick James, 11 Tavistock Road, CHELMSFORD, Essex. CM1 5JL, England. Phone: (+44) (0)1245 354366 E-mail: [email protected] Photographic Advisor: Michael Hendrie, Overbury, 33 Lexden Road, West Bergholt, COLCHESTER, Essex, CO6 3BX, England Phone: (+44) (0)1206 240021 Subscription to the Section newsletter costs £5 for two years, extended to three years for members who contribute to the work of the Section in any way, for example by submitting observations or articles. Renewals should be sent to the Director and cheques made payable to the BAA. Those due to renew should receive a reminder with this mailing. Section News from the Director Dear Section member, Encke has not changed present the lecture. There will be significantly in the last 50 years. further details about this meeting At the end of July I attended the in the next issue, on the Section Asteroids, Comets and Meteors There are a couple more comet web page and in BAA Circulars. meeting in Berlin. This event saw meetings coming up. The Royal a large gathering of comet Astronomical Society has a I have been kept very busy over specialists and a large part of this meeting on December 13 devoted the summer with a variety of issue is given over to my report of to "Cometary Science at the activities and still have some the meeting. One key message Launch of Rosetta". The meeting correspondence to catch up with. from the meeting is that there is runs from 10:30 to 15:30 and If you are waiting to hear from likely to be a rapid growth in takes place in the Geological me, please accept my apologies dedicated search telescopes. I Society Lecture Theatre in and I hope to respond soon. fear that the day of the amateur Burlington House. The organisers visual comet discovery may have give this summary: Recent years I will be visiting Antarctica again passed, unless SOHO fails before have seen marked advances in the from mid February to early April, a replacement is in orbit. There is study of comets, largely through so the next issue of The Comet's still however much useful work ground-based observations of Tale may be a little delayed from that the amateur can carry out. Hyakutake and Hale-Bopp, and its nominal issue month of April. CCD observers can provide in-situ measurements of I will be in limited email contact follow-up astrometry and Hyakutake and Borrelly. The (see address above - no pictures confirmation of the cometary imminent launch of the Rosetta please), but will be unable to nature of newly discovered mission is taken as an opportunity update the Section web pages. objects. Stephen Laurie recently to review progress made in this Whilst away I should be able to made observations within 24 field, and to discuss the questions begin work on the Journal papers hours of an object being posted on and challenges to be addressed in covering the comets of 1999 and the NEO confirmation page. the future. The meeting will cover 2000. Imagery also allows study of all aspects of cometary science, morphological changes in the from studies of the nucleus, dust, The visit is to set up our part of a coma and tail, and these are often and coma, to comets' interactions big European project to used by professionals. Visual with the solar wind." Following investigate the ozone layer. observers can continue traditional this, there is a pro-am discussion Although we know the basic magnitude estimation as this meeting on 2003 May 10, theory of how the ozone layer is allows long period comparison of provisionally in Liverpool. The destroyed, there is much fine returns of periodic comets. BAA meeting will include the first detail still to discover. Several observations show that the George Alcock memorial lecture Antarctic stations are participating absolute magnitude of comet and I am delighted to say that in the experiment, where balloons Brian Marsden has agreed to carrying ozone measuring sensors BAA COMET SECTION NEWSLETTER 2000 October 3 will be launched in carefully from: Jose Aguiar, Alexandre which currently do not send synchronised sequence to measure Amorim, Alexander Baransky, observations to the BAA. the same air mass as it passes over Sandro Baroni, Nicolas Biver, each station. We hope to discover Reinder Bouma, Nicholas Brown, Comets under observation were: which of several competing Jose Carvajal, Tim Cooper, 7P/Pons-Winnecke, 19P/Borrelly, variations of the theory give the Matyas Csukas, Mike Feist, 44P/Reinmuth, 46P/Wirtanen, best match with observation. Rafael Ferrando, Sergio Foglia, 51P/Harrington, 65P/Gunn, Stephen Getliffe, Antonio 77P/Longmore, 1999 U4 Since the last newsletter Giambersio, Guus Gilein, Bjorn (Catalina-Skiff), 1999 Y1 observations or contributions have Granslo, Roberto Haver, Michael (LINEAR), 2000 SV74 been received from the following Jager, Andreas Kammerer, Heinz (LINEAR), 2000 WM1 BAA members: James Abbott, Kerner, Attila Kosa-Kiss, Gary (LINEAR), 2001 A2 (LINEAR), Sally Beaumont, Neil Bone, Kronk, Martin Lehky, Rolando 2001 B2 (NEAT), 2001 HT50 Owen Brazell, Denis Buczynski, Ligustri, Pepe Manteca, Michael (LINEAR-NEAT), 2001 K5 Roger Dymock, Kenelm England, Mattiazzo, Maik Meyer, Antonio (LINEAR), 2001 MD7 Len Entwisle, James Fraser, Milani, Andrew Pearce, Maciej (LINEAR), 2001 N2 (LINEAR), Mario Frassatti, Maurice Gavin, Reszelski, Tony Scarmato, Hirita 2001 OG108 (LONEOS), 2001 Massimo Giuntoli, Peter Grego, Sato, Carlos Segarro, Giovanni Q2 (Petriew), 2001 Q5 (LINEAR- Werner Hasubick, Guy Hurst, Sostero, Graham Wolf and Seiichi NEAT), 2001 Q6 (NEAT), 2001 Nick James, Geoffrey Johnstone, Yoshida (apologies for any errors R1 (LONEOS), 2001 R6 Gordon MacLeod, Brian or omissions).