FreeLists / az-observing / [AZ-Observing] Re: Comet Animation

[Brian Skiff <Brian.Skiff@xxxxxxxxxx>]

     An IAU Circular issued a bit ago notes that observations similar to
the ones being done at Lowell, but by Carl Hergenrother using the 1.5-m
Kuiper telescope in the Catalinas shows the brightening (about 2 magnitudes
in the R band) was confined to the seeing-disc of the pseudo-nucleus
within a few arcsec radius of the center.  A good visual comet observer,
Mike Linnolt, reports on the same IAUC, an increase in total brightness
of only ~0.5 mag through the event, going from about 11.2 before to 10.7
afterwards.
     The gist of the data indicates that reports of the nucleus going to
mag 9 are incorrect, and suggestions of a substantial change in the total
brightness of the comet, including (ahem) mine, are also overstated.
The action was confined to the immediate nuclear region not much larger
than a star in a telescope.

\Brian
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