Comet C/2011 L4 (PANSTARRS) was found by Pan-STARRS 1 telescope on Haleakala, Maui, on the night of 2011, June 5-6. At the moment of discovery the comet was at a distance of nearly 7.9 AU from the Sun (discovery magnitude 19.4). According to it's orbit, around perihelion in March 2013 the comet would be located only 0.30 AU from the Sun and might become a bright naked eye object ( ~ magnitude 1). For more info about the discovery of this comet, see our previous post on this blog of 2011, June 09.

We performed some follow-up measurements of comet C/2011 L4 remotely from the Siding Spring-Faulkes Telescope South on 2012, May 18.5 through a 2.0-m f/10.0 Ritchey-Chretien + CCD. The comet is now at 4.6 AU from the Sun (m2 ~ 15.6). Below you can see our follow-up image (click on it for a bigger version):

Here's a neat video posted by SungrazerComets (the Twitter identity of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory's Sungrazing Comets website) this morning. It's an animation of images taken by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) on May 13 and 14, when Jupiter was passing through solar conjunction. It's pretty spiffy that SOHO can spot two of Jupiter's moons. As icing on the cake, the video also captures a sungrazing comet and a coronal mass ejection.

Discovery Date: May 13, 2012

Magnitude: 16.4mag

Discoverer: A. R. Gibbs (Catalina Sky Survey)


The orbital elements are published on M.P.E.C. 2012-J49.

It's not often that amateurs can provide an important support to professional astronomers involved in an international space mission. At a recent comet conference for the forthcoming Rosetta mission, which will orbit comet 67P/Churyumov - Gerasimenko in 2014, and place a lander on the surface, Faulkes Telescope Pro-Am Programme Manager Nick Howes had put forward a detailed plan for long term observations of the comet 67P, using the twin Faulkes 2m telescopes based in Hawaii and Siding Spring. The proposal challenge was picked up by Faulkes Telescope user Richard Miles, who managed to image the comet on April 19th using Faulkes South (E10 mpc code), and by our Team using Faulkes North (F65 mpc code).

Stacking of 18 R-filtered exposures, 120-sec each, obtained remotely, from the Haleakala-Faulkes Telescope North on 2012, Apr.25.5, through a 2.0-m f/10.0 Ritchey-Chretien + CCD, under good seeing conditions, shows that comet 67P has a stellar appearance, with R magnitude about 22 (limiting magnitude in our field of R about 22.5). At the moment of our image the comet was at roughly 5.683 AU from the Sun.

Our image of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko at the aphelion;

Discovery Date: April 27, 2012

Magnitude: 21.6 mag

Discoverer: Pan-STARRS 1 telescope (Haleakala)

The orbital elements are published on M.P.E.C. 2012-H94.

Discovery Date: April 29, 2012

Magnitude: 18.6 mag

Discoverer: Robert H. McNaught (Siding Spring)

The orbital elements are published on M.P.E.C. 2012-J11.

Astronomers using the Faulkes Telescope are first to re-image the comet before its Rosetta spacecraft meet-up in 2014

Astronomy is one of the few sciences that allows amateur practitioners to actively take part in real research projects -- be it monitoring planetary atmospheres or studying distant galaxies.

Over recent years, the advance in technology has led to the availability of research-grade telescopes across the Internet such as the Faulkes telescopes in Hawaii and Siding Spring (Austalia).

It was with these instruments that a team of amateur astronomers have been the first to re-image Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko as it makes its latest dive toward the inner solar system.

PHOTOS: 6 Intimate Comet Encounters

The comet, originally discovered in 1969 by Klim Churyumov and Svetlana Gerasimenko, orbits the sun once every six and a half years. The European Rosetta mission is currently en route to the comet and, in 2014, the spacecraft will have a close encounter with the "dirty snowball," dropping a small lander onto its icy surface.

At a recent conference for the Rosetta mission with both professional and amateur astronomers, Faulkes Telescope Pro-Am Program Manager Nick Howes put forward a detailed plan for long-term observations of the comet, using the 2-meter Faulkes telescopes.

Did a comet wipe out woolly mammoths and an ancient Indian culture almost 13,000 years ago? Geologists have fiercely debated the topic since 2007. Now a new study says an extraterrestrial impact wasn't to blame, though the scientists who originally proposed the impact idea still aren't convinced.

Three unexplained phenomena happened on Earth around 12,900 years ago. An extended cold spell known as the Younger Dryas cooled the world for 1300 years. Large creatures such as mammoths, mastodons, and their predators went extinct. And the Clovis culture - a group defined by the distinctive stone and bone tools that they manufactured, and presumed by many archaeologists to be the first inhabitants of the New World - suddenly disappeared.

In 2007, a team of researchers tried to tie together these seemingly disparate events to a single cause: an extraterrestrial object, possibly a comet, exploded above eastern Canada, they speculated. Their claimed evidence, which has been much disputed since it was first reported, included several types of "impact markers" sometimes found after an extraterrestrial object strikes Earth. These purported markers include unusual grains of a titanium-rich form of the mineral magnetite; tiny magnetic spherules; and elevated levels of iridium, a relatively rare element that's more common in extraterrestrial objects than in Earth's crust.

The researchers found all of these markers embedded within unusual layers of dark, organic-rich sediments that scientists often call "black mats." These strata are the remains of ancient marshes and swamps, and at many sites across North America, especially in the American Southwest, black mats began accumulating at the beginning of the Younger Dryas, the researchers noted. Many paleontologists have noted that black mats are often a sort of dividing line between older sediments containing fossils of ice-age megafauna, and younger sediments that don't. And many archaeologists have observed that black mats seem to mark the demise of the Clovis culture, because the distinctive spear points that they produced are common in sediments below the layers but nonexistent above.

Discovery Date: April 18, 2012

Magnitude: 19.6 mag

Discoverer: J. V. Scotti (Kitt Peak)


The orbital elements are published on M.P.E.C. 2012-H32.

Electric Universe proponent David Talbott presents the first of two video segments on the electric comet. Here he discusses NASA's surprising findings on the composition of comets, none supporting the traditional "dirty snowball" hypothesis.