COBS News archive

Latest on Comet 103P/Hartley
October 22, 2010

Comet 103P/Hartley is currently in the middle of Auriga moving to the southeast at a little over 3° per day. With closest approach to Earth on Oct. 20 (0.121 AU) and closest approach to the Sun on Oct. 28 (1.059 AU), the comet is as big and bright as it will probably get for this return. Unfortunately, the bright Full Moon will make observing the comet difficult for the next week and a half.

Comet P/2010 T2 (PANSTARRS)
October 18, 2010
Richard Wainscoat reports the discovery of a comet with a coma diameter of approximately 4" on 45-s CCD images taken with the 1.8-m Ritchey-Chretien "Pan- STARRS 1" telescope (+ W filter; bandpass 400-700 nm) at Haleakala.

Comet P/2000 Y3 = 2010 Q1 (SCOTTI)
August 22, 2010
J. V. Scotti, Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona, reports his recovery of comet P/2000 Y3 on images obtained with the 0.9-m Spacewatch reflector at Kitt Peak.

The Edgar Wilson Award 2010
August 07, 2010
The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory announces that the 2010 Edgar Wilson Award for the discovery of comets (cf. IAUCs 6936, 8962, 9066) is being divided among the following four individuals for three different comets ...

Comet 237P/2010 L2 (LINEAR)
August 07, 2010
Comet P/2010 L2 = 2002 LN_13 (cf. IAUC 9152) has been given the permanent designation 237P.

COBS - 1 month since announcement
June 24, 2010
It is 1 month since COBS was announced to public users.

Two new comets have been discovered.
June 24, 2010
A new comet was found by WISE spacecraft. Another comet discovery was reported by A.R.Gibbs ...

Comet Vales: 2010 Jun 17
June 19, 2010
We are now at 63 days post-outburst. A total of more than 86 minutes integration reaching a plate limit of V=24 shows ...

Comet P/2010 K2 (WISE)
June 04, 2010
Object reported by the WISE spacecraft without description and posted on the Minor Planet Centers NEOCP webpage, has been found to show cometary appearance...

Meeting on Asteroids and Comets in Europe
May 13, 2010
The conference MACE will take place in and around Višnjan/Tićan, Croatia, on the long weekend of May 21-23, 2010.

Observation of a dust spiral structure in periodic comet P/2010 H2 (Vales)
May 12, 2010
We observed the comet P/2010 H2 (Vales) in moonless conditions on May 1, 2010 using B, V and R photometric filters, as well as with the clear filter on the 0.6 m, f/3.3 Cichocki telescope at the Crni Vrh Observatory. The exposures, all of 8 minutes duration, were tracked on the comet and obtained between 19:46 and 20:31 UT. The pixel scale was 0.93 arcseconds.

Discovery of an extraordinary outburst of an unidentified moving object at Crni Vrh Observatory
April 18, 2010
On images taken by J. Vales in the course of the Crni Vrh Asteroid and Comet Search program PIKA, on April 16, 2010 an unusually bright unknown object (mag. 12.5) was automatically detected. The object was near opposition, in an area searched by Catalina Sky Survey (CSS) just a day before.