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.