A preliminary orbit has now been published for comet 2002 C1. The following is excerpted from IAU Circular 7813: COMET C/2002 C1 (IKEYA-ZHANG) T = 2002 Mar. 8.912 TT Peri. = 19.237 Node = 111.715 2000.0 q = 0.49127 AU Incl. = 26.341 2002 TT R. A. (2000) Decl. Delta r Elong. Phase m1 Feb. 1 0 08.31 -17 50.4 1.335 0.951 45.4 47.5 8.9 3 0 11.58 -16 51.8 1.307 0.916 44.4 48.8 8.7 5 0 14.93 -15 50.5 1.279 0.882 43.5 50.3 8.5 7 0 18.33 -14 46.2 1.249 0.847 42.5 51.9 8.3 The comet will become somewhat brighter but also closer to the Sun in the coming weeks. The extended ephemeris shows the comet reaching 5th magnitude near (in mid-March), but only 25 degrees from the Sun. In the ephemeris list, 'Delta' is the distance from Earth, 'r' is the distance from the Sun (both in AU), 'Elong.' is the angular distance from the Sun in degrees, and 'm1' is the predicted magnitude. The visual observations accompanying the IAUC indicate magnitudes around 9th and a coma diameter between 3' and 5'. As with the previous visual discovery, the reason LINEAR (or any of the other big surveys) didn't find this first is because of the low solar elongation---the only place left for northern-hemisphere amateur comet-hunters to look that's not covered by the surveys. There are doubtless a substantial number of fainter comets like this one (that don't get very far from the Sun in the sky) that are being missed due to the lack of simple telephoto-based wide-field CCD patrols of the dusk/dawn sky within about 75 degrees of the Sun. \Brian --- This message is from the AZ-Observing mailing list. If you wish to be removed from this list, send E-mail to: AZ-Observing-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, with the subject: unsubscribe. The list's archive is at: //www.freelists.org/archives/az-observing This is a discussion list. Please send personal inquiries directly to the message author. In other words, do not use "reply" for personal messages. Thanks.