[meteorite-list] New Comet Hoenig

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 09:52:06 2004
Message-ID: <200208021947.MAA09407_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://skyandtelescope.com/printable/news/current/article_688.asp

New Comet Hoenig
By Roger W. Sinnott
Sky & Telescope
August 2, 2002

A comet first seen by a German amateur astronomer in
July, then lost for five days, is about to become an easy
target for small telescopes in the Northern Hemisphere. The
nearly tailless object looks like a fuzzy, 10th-magnitude
star, slowly making its way from Andromeda into Cassiopeia.
It should brighten to 9th magnitude by mid-August as it
enters the north circumpolar sky, then remain this bright
through September while turning south across Ursa Major.

It was shortly after midnight on July 22nd that
Sebastian Hoenig of Dossenheim, Germany, found himself
unable to sleep. So he got up, loaded his Meade 10-inch
telescope into the car, and drove to his favorite
observing site in the Odenwald woods near Heidelberg.
He soon stumbled upon a fuzzy glow just north of the
Great Square of Pegasus, in a region he knew to be
almost devoid of galaxies and other deep-sky objects.
But Hoenig had no star atlas with him - not even a
scrap of paper for making notes - so he rummaged
through the car and turned up an empty water bottle!
Its small white label was just large enough for him to
make a careful sketch of the star field. He kept the
object in view long enough to determine that it was
moving slowly to the north, at about 3 arcminutes per
hour.

Later that day Hoenig e-mailed the discovery details to
the Central Bureau of Astronomical Telegrams (CBAT) in
Cambridge, Massachusetts. But neither he nor any other
observer could locate the object again, owing to a very
bright Moon and the object's uncertain location.
Finally on July 27th, Ken-ichi Kadota in Saitama,
Japan, captured a CCD image of the comet 8° north of
Hoenig's initial position, thus confirming the
discovery.

Calculations by Gareth V. Williams (Smithsonian
Astrophysical Observatory), announced July 30th on IAU
Circular 7941, indicate that Comet Hoenig will reach
perihelion (its closest point to the Sun) around
October 1st. It will then be situated between the
orbits of Venus and the Earth, traveling in a
near-parabolic orbit inclined 73 ° to the plane of the
ecliptic. The ephemeris below gives the comet's right
ascension and declination (equinox 2000.0) at 0 hours
Universal Time for the next few days, its predicted
magnitude, and the constellation though which it is
passing.

With this find, Hoenig becomes the first amateur
astronomer to discover a comet from German soil since
1946. But he's no stranger to comets; he is also
credited with locating 20 comets in SOHO spacecraft
images of the Sun's vicinity.

                   Comet Hoenig, C/2002 O4

   Date (0h Dec. (°
      UT) R.A.(h, m) ') Magnitude Constellation

     Aug 2 23 09.4 +51 13 10 And

     Aug 3 23 05.8 +53 21 10 Cas

     Aug 4 23 01.7 +55 30 9.9 Cas

     Aug 5 22 57.0 +57 40 9.8 Cep

     Aug 6 22 51.5 +59 52 9.8 Cep

     Aug 7 22 45.1 +62 03 9.7 Cep

     Aug 8 22 37.6 +64 15 9.6 Cep

     Aug 9 22 28.6 +66 24 9.6 Cep

    Aug 10 22 17.9 +68 32 9.5 Cep
Received on Fri 02 Aug 2002 03:47:41 PM PDT