First comet of 2022 was discovered by Krisztián Sárneczky from Piszkéstető observatory, Hungary, Europe.
It is first comet found by Hungarian astronomer after 35 years.
Unfortunately, it is a small comet, brightest at 18 magnitude, visible only in a medium class telescopes and CCD camera.
Comet C/2022 A1 (Sárneczky) passed Earth on January 8 at a distance of 47.6 million kilometer (0.318 AU). Its closes approach to the Sun will be at the end of January.
This long period comet moves around the Sun very fast in retrograde direction, which means that it orbit our central star in opposite direction as Earth.
“This is small comet, perhaps the smallest we ever observered. It is about 50 000x dimmer as stars visible by naked eyes or with small telescopes. Its diameter could be in range of few tens metres, not bigger than 100 meters for sure ” said Krisztián.
And added: “I´ve been observing from Piszkéstető observatory for 24 years. And during the past year I scanned the sky every clear night. I search for near Earth objects, mainly asteroids, but I don’t care that I found something different this time. “
Krisztián Sárneczky is the third Hungarian comet discoverer. Before him, Miklós Lovas found 5 comets, 93P/Lovas, 184p/Lovas, C/1974 F1 (Lovas), C/1976 U1 (Lovas) e C/1977 D1 (Lovas).
György Kulin is a co-discoverer of C/1942 C1 Whipple-Bernasconi-Kulin.
Here you can read my older interview with this prolific asteroid and now also comet discoverer:
http://www.skaw.sk/interview-with-kr...sarneczky.html
