Monday, October 12, 2015

Comet 133P/Elst-Pizzaro

Comet 133P/Elst-Pizzaro photographed in a 10-minute R-filter exposure obtained on August 23, 1996 with the 1.5-m Danish telescope at La Silla and the DFOSC multi-mode instrument. The observers were visiting astronomers Heike Rauer (Paris Observatory, Meudon France) and Hermann Boehnhardt (Munich Observatory, Germany). The field of view is 8.1 x 6.6 arc minutes with North up and East to the left. At the time of the observation, the comet was 1.68 AU from Earth and 2.68 AU from the Sun.

Cometary activity was initially found in photographs by Guido Pizarro and Eric W. Elst with the ESO 1-metre Schmidt telescope at the La Silla Observatory on July 14, 1996. Eric W. Elst reported the discovery of comet activity on August 7, 1997.

Elst-Pizarro is a transition object with dual status as both comet and asteroid. As an asteroid it is designated as (7968) Elst-Pizarro. The object was reported in 1979 as minor planet 1979 OW7 with its image on a photographic plate being completely stellar in appearance. it has the orbit of a Main-belt Asteroid with semi major axis of 3.160 AU and period of 5.62 years, low inclination of 1.4 degrees and very low eccentricity of 0.1606156. The object has an asteroidal Jupiter Tisserand parameter of 3.185

Credit: ESO La Silla Observatory

Comet 27P/Crommelin


Comet 27P/Crommelin photographed by Michael J.S. Belton on March 28, 1984 at 03:19 UT at Kitt Peak National Observatory with a 0.9 meter reflector telescope and RCA CCD and R band filter. The comet was 8 days past perihelion, 1.006 AU from the sun, 0.792 AU from earth, with a sun-comet-earth phase angle of 66.2 degrees. The comet shows a dust fan. This is one of the images that resulted from the comet Crommelin trial run for future observations of comets Halley and Giacobini-Zinner under the International Halley watch (IHW).

Comet 27P/Crommelin is named for Andrew C. D. Crommelin who used earlier observations and calculated its orbit in 1930. It had other names after earlier observers and discoveries and subsequent losses:
Comet Pons after Jean-Louis Pons found it on February 23, 1818 observing from Marseilles.
Comet Pons-Coggia-Winnecke after Jérôme E. Coggia found it on November 10, 1873 at Marseille, and independently by Friedrich A. T. Winnecke on November 11, 1873 at Strasbourg.
Comet Pons-Coggia-Winnecke-Forbes after Alexander F. I. Forbes found it on November 19, 1928 from Cape Town, South Africa.

Comet 27P/Crommelin is a Halley type comet with a period of 28.1 years. It last passed perihelion on August 4, 2011 with perihelion distance of 0.746971 AU.

Larson, S.M., IHW COMET NNSN CALIB EXPERIMENT DATA RECORD CROMMELIN V1.0, IHW-C-NNSN-3-EDR-CROMMELIN-V1.0, NASA Planetary Data System, 1991.

Comet 22P/Kopff


Comet 22P/Kopff imaged in the infrared at 8.28 micron wavelength with the Spirit III instrument on the Midcourse Space Experiment (MSX) spacecraft on September 11, 1996 at 15:11:56 UT The comet was 71 days past perihelion and 1.732 AU from the sun. The infrared image shows a dust coma and trail. Image from NASA Planetary Data System MSX Small Bodies Images node.
Kraemer, K., Lisse, C.M., Price, S., Mizuno, D., Walker, R.G., Farnham,T.L., and Makinen, T., AKOPFF. MSX-C-SPIRIT3-3-MSXSB-V1.0:KOPFF_AKOPFF_FIT. NASA Planetary Data System, 2005.
Comet 22P/Kopff was discovered August 22, 1906 by August Kopff at Königstuhl Observatory, Heidelberg, Germany at magnitude 11 on plate/photo taken on the discovery date. Comet 22P/Kopff has been observed on all perihelion returns except the perihelion passage of Nov 25, 1912. Comet 22P/Kopff passes perihelion on October 25, 2015 with perihelion distance 1.558814 AU.