New STEREO Comet, favours southern hemisphere

[ian musgrave]

A new 10th magnitude comet, found by Jiangao Ruan in STEREO spacecraft images, will be well placed for southern observers.

Here is the MEPC with C/2009 G1 orbital elements. And I have made a spotters map of the eastern morning sky and I have a printable PDF with a high resolution view of the comets location here (yes, it's labeled G2 on my map, fumble fingers and no time to re-edit). The Comet is really magnitude 10 (and not likely to get much brighter), rather than the 12 indicated on the hig resolution map (limitations of the way I put data into SkyMap, fixed in the spotters map).

Sadly the comet is currently in a very unfavourable position, very low to the eastern horizon in the morning, with the full Moon in the sky, this will make it hard to see for several days (although there has been CCD confirmation from Japan). It will get better. By the 18th of May, the comet will be 26 degrees above the horizon at astronomical twilight (as seen in Australia), with a last quarter Moon in the sky.

[iceman (Mike)]

Thanks Ian, I might try for this in the mornings in a few weeks.

[jjjnettie (Jeanette)]

We'll put this comet on the top of our observing list for Barambah Dark Sky Camp.
Thanks for the heads up Ian.

[astroron (Ron)]

It's already in the ARGO NAVIS data base for future observations.
Observed 2 comets tonight Comet LULIN and Q3 Siding Spring, the latter seems to have faded a bit since my last observation