Terry Lovejoy

You're killing me!

What a disgrace.

I remember that Dan. I think I may have made some enquiries with the BAA to see if they had some of the originals but unfortunately nothing could be found.

This seems to be the only photo taken of the comet during the eclipse that hasn't gone missing. Hopefully others will turn up sometime in the future.

Darker skies, meant I could get a much deeper image of the new comet. This is a 5 x 5 degree crop. Sep 14 9hrs UT.

The new comet from home. This is September 13 8:47, 2025 UT. I've cropped it 4 x 4 degrees and I've marked the bright star Spica and Mars. The uneven sky background is a unfortunate consequence of strong light pollution from home.

This is what I a seeing as well with the last set of observations.

No I didn't, the sky is way too bright in that direction to pick up a 7th magnitude comet (at least in small binoculars). Maybe tomorrow.

Not officially announced yet, it appears on the Minor Planet Center page as "SWAN25B" : minorplanetcenter.net/iau/NEO/pccp...

How did a comet this bright go undetected until today? This is 3 x 1 degree crop from an image stack I made tonight (Sep 12 8:40 UT) from my balcony.

Great detective work by you and Gary!

Andrew Pearce wrote to Bill Gray to see if the 3 new positions had much impact on the computed orbit and the answer is not really. We would need better astrometry across the whole observing arc. Nominally, he has perihelion Sep 2061 +/- 7 months.

Here is some more images from Cordoba.

FOV is 2.33 x 2.33 degrees and star 25 Ceti is to the lower right

Big thanks to Andrew and Perth Observatory! Hope they don't me posting the April 24, 1917, image which I help clean up so they could plate solve it.

Comet C/1963 A1 (Ikeya) doppelgänger?

"Nice chops" as we would say here in Oz!

Not nearly enough, its my escapism. I love that it is an easy 3 hour flight from near tropical Brisbane to here.

G. P. Bond is credited with taking the first ever photograph of a comet. Comet C/1858 L1 (Donati) on Sep 28, 1858.

I think it was close to 10km round trip and just under 1000m vertical climb. I chose not to go all the way to the summit which would have added another 3.5km and 350m vertical. You can see why here -->

I always consider C/2014 Q2 the doppelganger for C/2004 Q2. Similar orbit, brightness as well as passage across the sky, almost exactly 10 years apart!

Did you want to borrow my reciprocating saw?

MSAGA?

Only 101 years to wait for the next return - which should be an impressive return!

Image of comet C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy) by Michael Jäger, https://fg-kometen.vdsastro.de/pix/test/bild.php?nr=11759

#bskycometography no. 272

C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy)

2014 Aug 17: Discovered by @cometguy.bsky.social T. Lovejoy (Australia) at 15 mag. The comet reached 3-4 mag shortly prior perihelion (2015 Jan 27 at 1.28 au) and was last seen on 2016 Sep 10. Its period is about 7000 years.
☄️🔭 #CometWatch

👀

Very nice comet, it was awesome seeing a 5th magnitude comet and Supernova 1987A together in binoculars.

As part of my normal morning routine, I go to bsky and look for the latest #bskycometograph y post :) Keep posting Maik!