News

Comets Discoverers by Country

I create a little infographics about comets discoverers by Country. I considered both professionist and amateur astronomer and SOHO comet discoverer.

Giuseppe Pappa

With the last two comets discovered in the last two months of 2016, C/2016U1 (NEOWISE) and C72016X1 (Lemmon), the total number of comet discovered in 2016 is 36 plus 1 comet discovered on STEREO images(I didn’t count the SOHO comet because they are not officially numbered at the moment). The C/2016 U1 became in the last days of the year a binocular object in the morning sky.

About the statistical analysis, the PanSTARRRS survey was the most prolific comet survey with 20 comet discoveries, while only one comet was discovered by an amateur astronomer, C/2016R3 by G.Borisov from Russia.

Comets discovered in October 2016

In this month I congratulate with Rose Matheny for her first two comets discovered in a couple of days. She is a research astronomer for the Catalina Sky Survey (CSS) and after discoverer and confirming asteroids finally arrive the honor to give a name to a solar object…exactly two!
The first one it was discovered on 6^th October while the other one was discovered on 10^th October, the two comets were announced on CBET 4328 and CBET 4330.
Finally, as each month the PANSTARRS survey discovered another comet, C/2016T3.

Giuseppe Pappa

Comet discovered in September 2016

Amateur Gennady Borisov discovered his 6^th comets while Alex Gibbs discovered his 29^th comet this month.
As every month PANSTARRS discovery a couple also in September. Here the list of comets discovered:

-C/2016R2 PANSTARRS
-C/2016R3 BORISOV
-P/2016R4 GIBBS
-C/2016S1 PANSTARRS

Giuseppe Pappa

Comet discovered in August 2016

Will Panstarrs's cannibalism of comet's discovery end? It very difficult to stop this great survey; but another survey compete with them, and Kowalski discovered is 15th comets.
In August they discoveried 4 comets:
P/2016P1, P/2016P2 ,P/2016P4 and C/2016Q2.
The last one C/2016 Q4 took the surname of Kowalski

Giuseppe Pappa

Comets discovered in June and July 2016

Only three comets were discovered in last two months June and July and some other comets were rediscovered.

The three comets were discovered, exactly one in June C/2016M1 PANSTARRS and two in July C/2016N4 MASTER and C/2016N6 PANSTARRS.

Giuseppe Pappa

Comets discovered in May 2016

Five comets were discovered on May:

P/2016J1 (PANSTARRS)
C/2016J2 (Dennau)
C/2016KA (Catalina) (reported as asteroid and after found cometary activity).
P/2016J3 (STEREO)
C/2016K1 (LINEAR)

Giuseppe Pappa

Comet discovered in April 2016, C/2015WZ outburst?

In this month only three comets were discovered and all by PANSTARRS. However only the comet P/2016G1 were officially discovered in April while both C/2015WZ and C/2015HG16 turned to be a comet after founding as asteroid before.

C/2015WZ could reach 10th magnitude in this days after a possible outburst.

Giuseppe Pappa

Comets discovered between February and March 2016

In the last two months were discovered a poor number of comet and all from professional survey. One, P/2016BA14 was discovered on January but cometary nature was confirmed on February.
On February were discovered C/2016C1 PANSTARRS and C/2016C2 NEOWISE while on March were discovered comets 2016 E1 PANSTARRS and 2016 E2 Kowalski.

Giuseppe Pappa

CometWatch Ep011 – Cometbase

On the 31st of January two members of CometBase, Kirill Grishin & Taras Pristavskiy, team were interviewed by Neil Norman, Mary Spicer & Nick Evetts.
The great diversity of topics connected with CometBase was touched, not only results of previous year, also plans for future were discussed.

Comets discovered in January 2016

In January were discovered 8 comets, 5 from PANSTARRS survey, 1 from Mt. Lemmon survey by E. Christensen, 1 from LINEAR and 1 from NEOWISE

Here the comets discovered list:

C/2016A1 (PANSTARRS)

P/2016A2 (Christensen)

P/2016A3 (PANSTARRS)

C/2016A5 (PANSTARRS)

C/2016A6 (PANSTARRS)

P/2016A7 (PANSTARRS)

C/2016A8 (LINEAR)

C/2016B1 (NEOWISE)

Giuseppe Pappa

CometBase Alert N4. Comet C/2013 X1 (PANSTARRS) in outburst.

Comet C/2013 X1 (PANSTARRS) indicates increased activity since the end of 2015. On the 21^st of December and 3^rd of January comet has undergone outbursts. At present C/2013 X1 reached 8.0 mag (it’s by 1.7 magnitudes or 5 times brighter than forecasts).

Happy New Year 2016!

read more...
2015-12-31 Taras Prystavski

Comets discovered in December 2015

In December(29-12) were discovered 11 comets, 3 of them turned to be periodic while the others were non-periodic. Three of them(2015XY1,2015YG1 and 2015Y1) at the moment of the discovery identified as asteroids but later were found as cometary objects. Leonid Elenin was the only amateur to discovery a comet this month while comet 2015X8 became a target for amateur with medium size telescope according with last mag exstimations of 12/13.
Here the comets discovered list:
P/2015X1(PANSTARRS),C/2015X2(Catalina),P/2015X3(PANSTARRS),C/2015X4(Elenin), C/2015X5(PANSTARRS),P/2015X6(PANSTARRS),C/2015X7(ATLAS),C/2015X8(NEOWISE), C/2015XY1(Lemmon),C/2015Y1(LINEAR), C/2015YG1(NEOWISE)

Giuseppe Pappa

Comet C/1997O1 Tilbrook

History about the discovery of the comet C/1997 O1 Tilbrook

by Giuseppe Pappa

New photogallery uploader

We’re glad to announce that starting today you all have a great opportunity to upload your images to CometBase! New Image Uploader Tool is much faster and more reliable than the old one so each user can easily share his comet images.

Comets discovered in November 2015

Six comets were discovered in the last month of Nov 2015:
2015V1 PANSTARRS
2015V2 Johnson
2015V3 PANSTARRS
2015V4 PANSTARRS
2015W1 Gibbs
2015W2 Catalina
All comets were discovered by automatic survey, 3 from PANSTARRS and 3 from Catalina Sky Survey.

Giuseppe Pappa

Comet 122P/de Vico

Another new interesting history about the past comet. This time I'll speak about the comet 122P/de Vico, from his discovery on 1846 by Francesco de Vico since the recovery on 1995 by three Japanese amateurs.

Giuseppe Pappa

153P/Ikeya-Zhang comet

153P/Ikeya-Zhang Historic informations, images and other about the comet Ikeya-Zhang on the last apparition of 2002, and the past passage. Neil Norman and Giuseppe Pappa

Comet C/1907 L2(1907d) Daniel

Comet C/1907 L2(1907d) Daniel Historic informations,images and light curve of the comet discovered by Zaccheus Daniel on 1907. by Giuseppe Pappa and Neil Normal

CCD/DSLR observations start

Dear colleagues,
We’re happy to present a CCD observations module, we’ve been working on since April.

This module allows an observer to submit his CCD and DSLR observations both. As these types of observations have differences they’re marked in the final report as “CCD” and “DSLR” respectively.

CCD observations module release - 15 October 2015

Dear colleagues! Since April we have been developing the new large module for CCD observations submitting ,and very soon (15th of October) we will be introducing this module for public usage. Now we'd like to describe this module.

Comet C/1996 B2 (Hyakutake)

Our story moves to Japan and an amateur astronomer named Yuji Hyakutake. Yuji, who's surname means, a hundred Samurai, became interested in astronomy when,as a 15 year old boy, he witnessed the great comet C/1965 S1 (IkeyaSeki), this great sungrazer made him want to discover his own comet of equal greatness and the fact that this one was discovered by two Japanese observers only fuelled his enthusiasm.

read more...
2015-08-08 Taras Prystavski

Coma condensation diagrams

From today a coma condensation diagrams can be created in “CometBase”.

Comet C/1911 O1 (Brooks)

In the morning of July 21st,1911, William Brooks was was sweeping the eastern sky from the Smith Observatory, New York, when he discovered a faint comet of magnitude 10 in the constellation of Pegasus which was moving slowly north west in motion. Comet was designed Comet Brooks or C/1911 O1 (Brooks).

read more...
2015-05-20 Taras Prystavski

CometBase Alert №3. Comet 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann bright outburst!

The brightest over the last 5 years outburst of comet 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann reported. Comet is about 12 mag. and can be observed visually. CCD observations using photometric filters are very appreciated.

C/1729 P1 (Sarabat) - unlucky comet of the millennium

A comet that is very much overlooked because it was by no means a spectacular visual sight , nor was it a comet with great brightness or a tail that tore the very heavens asunder, but is an object that has always perplexed me and ignited my imagination since the days of C/1995 O1 (Hale-Bopp) for one reason, its sheer size and what could have been great potential had circumstances prevailed.

April 2015 - Statistics

Database press release devoted to the statistics in March, 2015. 1432 observations were added during the last month to the database (+ 17.5 %). C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy) has become the most popular comet again. 143 observations of this comet were added (+ 20.4 %). There were much less observations of comet C/2007 W1 (Boattini) made in the year 2008 - 103 (+ 312 %).

Sidgwick method

To determine the magnitude of comet by using Sidgwick method, you should observe comet in a focal plane and remember its magnitude and angular size. After it, you should defocus comparison stars up to the such size, which comet coma has. After it, observer should compare the magnitude of comet, he remembered before, and the magnitude of defocused comparison stars.

3D/Biela

The story of comet Biela begins in 1772 when a comet was observed by Jaques Liebax Montaigne and the independently observed by Charles Messier. A further observation was made in 1805 by Jean-Louis Pons, but no connection was made between the two objects- enter Captain Wilhelm Von Biela (b; 10.03.1782, d; 18.02.1856).

Program of adding observer`s archives

A lot of observers have large archives of their own observations, but these data are usually a kind of dust on the shelves, because it takes a lot of time to add so many observations manually. That`s why we can help you to upload all your observations. If you are going to take part in this program you may send us your observations in any suitable format and we`ll upload them soon.

If you have observations in .txt format or any other text file, you can send this file to us. If you have observations only in diary of observations, you can just send us scanned pages.

If you have observations in ICQ format, you may kindly upload them by yourself in your private cabinet:
"Observations" (blue label) ->"Import observations in ICQ" of "Upload file in ICQ format" both in right menu.

March 2015 - Statistics

Comet C/1956 R1 (Arend - Roland)

This bright comet of 1957 , C/1956 Arend / Roland, was discovered by Sylvain Arend and Georges Roland on photographic plates taken on September 14th but not checked until November 8th at the Uccle observatory , Belgium, during their search for asteroids.