Terry Lovejoy

Can't wait to see it :)

I've blocked out some time at Siding Spring following the start of the eclipse. Fingers crossed for clear skies!

Moonlight is hampering observations of Comet C/2026 A1 tonight. But nonetheless here it is taken remotely from Siding Spring Observatory using a 51cm F7 telescope March 1 (9:44 UT). Green filter magnitude 12.2.

Its amazing what these scopes can do for their size!

Comet C/2026 A1 (MAPS) continues to brighten. I acquired this image early Feb 21 remotely from Chile using a 25cm f3.8 ASA Newtonian. Magnitude 13, a hint of tail and passing by spiral galaxy NGC1232.

Yes I hope so as well!

Timelapse over 4 weeks (Jan 19 - Feb 13) showing the steady brightening of Comet MAPS as it dives towards the sun.

You're killing me!

What a disgrace.

I remember that Dan. I think I may have made some enquiries with the BAA to see if they had some of the originals but unfortunately nothing could be found.

This seems to be the only photo taken of the comet during the eclipse that hasn't gone missing. Hopefully others will turn up sometime in the future.

Darker skies, meant I could get a much deeper image of the new comet. This is a 5 x 5 degree crop. Sep 14 9hrs UT.

The new comet from home. This is September 13 8:47, 2025 UT. I've cropped it 4 x 4 degrees and I've marked the bright star Spica and Mars. The uneven sky background is a unfortunate consequence of strong light pollution from home.

This is what I a seeing as well with the last set of observations.

No I didn't, the sky is way too bright in that direction to pick up a 7th magnitude comet (at least in small binoculars). Maybe tomorrow.

Not officially announced yet, it appears on the Minor Planet Center page as "SWAN25B" : minorplanetcenter.net/iau/NEO/pccp...

How did a comet this bright go undetected until today? This is 3 x 1 degree crop from an image stack I made tonight (Sep 12 8:40 UT) from my balcony.

Great detective work by you and Gary!

Andrew Pearce wrote to Bill Gray to see if the 3 new positions had much impact on the computed orbit and the answer is not really. We would need better astrometry across the whole observing arc. Nominally, he has perihelion Sep 2061 +/- 7 months.

Here is some more images from Cordoba.

FOV is 2.33 x 2.33 degrees and star 25 Ceti is to the lower right

Big thanks to Andrew and Perth Observatory! Hope they don't me posting the April 24, 1917, image which I help clean up so they could plate solve it.

Comet C/1963 A1 (Ikeya) doppelgänger?

"Nice chops" as we would say here in Oz!

Not nearly enough, its my escapism. I love that it is an easy 3 hour flight from near tropical Brisbane to here.

G. P. Bond is credited with taking the first ever photograph of a comet. Comet C/1858 L1 (Donati) on Sep 28, 1858.

I think it was close to 10km round trip and just under 1000m vertical climb. I chose not to go all the way to the summit which would have added another 3.5km and 350m vertical. You can see why here -->