[meteorite-list] A Comet Turns On (Comet P/2004 TU12)

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed Nov 17 14:05:51 2004
Message-ID: <200411171905.LAA19440_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://skyandtelescope.com/news/article_1392_1.asp

A Comet Turns On
Sky & Telescope
November 15, 2004

What began as the routine discovery of a near-Earth asteroid
on October 10th took on a curious and dramatic twist a month
later when the new find suddenly developed a short tail.
Franco Mallia, Gianluca Masi, and Roger Wilcox first spotted
the pencil-thin appendage in CCD images they'd taken on
November 11th with a 0.36-meter reflector at Las Campanas
Observatory, Chile. The tail independently turned up in CCD
frames taken less than a day later by Juan Lacruz in La Canada,
Spain. No one yet knows what caused the tail to form (two other
asteroids-turned-comets, 107P/Wilson-Harrington and
133P/Elst-Pizarro, have been discovered in recent decades).
But observers are certain it wasn't there when Rob McNaught
first recorded the asteroid, designated 2004 TU12, using a
0.5-meter Schmidt telescope at Australia's Siding Spring
Observatory. A preliminary orbit issued by the Minor Planet
Center puts Comet Siding Spring (now officially P/2004 TU12)
between the orbits of Earth and Mars, near the perihelion of a
looping, 5.3-year-long track. At 14th magnitude, it's too
faint to be seen visually in small telescopes.

For more details about Comet Siding Spring, including a
time-lapse image sequence, see Masi's Web site:

http://www.bellatrixobservatory.org/neo.html.
Received on Wed 17 Nov 2004 02:05:47 PM PST