[meteorite-list] How I Found My New Comet (C/2006 T1 Levy)

[Ron Baalke]

http://skytonight.com/news/4306207.html

How I Found My New Comet
        
The prolific comet hunter recalls the story of his latest find.
by David H. Levy
October 4, 2006
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Editor's Note: In the following account, Sky & Telescope contributing
editor David Levy tells how he discovered comet C/2006 T1 last Monday
from his Jarnac Observatory in Vail, Arizona.
The new Comet Levy was his first visual discovery in 12 years, and it
brings his total comet finds to 22 (9 visually and 13 photographically). 
C/2006 T1 reaches perihelion on October 9th at a distance of 1.072 
astronomical units from the Sun. It
is not expected to get brighter than about 10th or 11th magnitude. The
comet is currently in Leo, moving southeastward to Sextans. To get the
comet's orbital elements and ephemeris, go to the Central Bureau for
Astronomical Telegrams
<http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/Ephemerides/Comets/2006T1.html>.

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The morning of October 2, 2006, was party cloudy and warm as I set up
Miranda, my 16-inch f/5 Newtonian reflector, to begin my comet hunt. As
other telescopes whirred nearby, taking their automated search exposures
for comets, I began searching along a strip of sky that soon brought me
to Saturn. Then I did a double take. About 0.6° away there was a small,
fuzzy, 10th-magnitude glow. My first reaction was that it must be a
ghost image of some kind. But it looked too real for that. To check, I
looked through my Meade 8-inch "finderscope," which was mounted atop the
16-inch just for emergencies like this. The object appeared fainter in
the 8-inch, but in exactly the same place. A quick check of my star
atlas revealed no bright NGC objects in that area.

But I've been fooled by reflections before, especially with CCD images.
As dawn began, I decided on a final check. One of my survey telescopes —
a Meade 14-inch telescope with HyperStar coupled to a Canon digital SLR
camera — had just completed its morning run. I quickly aimed it at the
suspect's position and took a series of exposures. I went inside the
house, downloaded the images, and then displayed them on the computer
screen. The images clearly showed a real, moving object. With my heart
pounding with excitement, I e-mailed a quick report to Dan Green of the
Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams, notifying him of the
possible new comet. But I still wasn't 100% sure.

So I called my friend Tom Glinos in Ontario, Canada, whose remotely
operated 25½-inch RC Optical Systems telescope at Jarnac Observatory
has been doing yeoman's work in finding
asteroids over the last two years. "I instinctively knew something
interesting had happened," Glinos recalls. "We have checked each other's
'discoveries' in the past, and this case was no different. David and I
carefully examined his images, trying to eliminate any possible optical
illusions or misidentifications. In the end we were left with a comet
with no visible tail."

Later in the day, a simple message that gave the object's position and
brightness went up quietly on the Minor Planet Center's NEO (Near-Earth
Object) Confirmation Page. This way, observers
around the world could try to confirm the new comet before it rose again
for me. Richard Miles, president of the British Astronomical Association,
was among the first observers. "I was
totally fooled by Saturn, being less than a degree away," he notes. "I
first thought [the object] might have been confused with one of Saturn's
satellites. Then I mistook the glow seeping into the side of the [CCD]
frame as being Saturn itself. In fact, it was the new comet."

The following morning, October 3rd, the comet had moved enough away from
Saturn to shine beautifully by itself. Later that day Dan Green issued
IAU Circular 8757, which announced Comet Levy, C/2006 T1, to the rest of
the world. After a hectic and wondrous 24 hours, helped by fellow
observers in Hungary, Italy, the UK, and the US, I finally enjoyed my
first uninterrupted look at this new cosmic interloper.