Confirmations for (most of) December 2023

I normally do these one full month at a time, but since we are getting close to SOHO-5000, I am trying to stay on top of it all.

Soho#  Date/Time of Post  Discoverer     Tel     Group   Images of...
=====================================================================
4941  Dec01,23 02:48:03   J.Ruan        C3,C2    Kreutz  Dec01-02,23
4942  Dec01,23 21:44:49   H.Tan           C2     Kreutz  Dec01-02,23
4943  Dec02,23 14:51:07   Z.Xu          C3,C2    Kreutz  Dec02-03,23
4944  Dec02,23 15:52:33   H.Tan           C2     Kreutz  Dec02-03,23
4945  Dec03,23 10:03:36   H.Tan           C2     Kreutz  Dec03,23
4946  Dec07,23 00:10:50   J.Ruan          C2     Kreutz  Dec06-07,23
4947  Dec08,23 23:39:57   J.Ruan          C2     Kreutz  Dec09,23
4948  Dec09,23 06:21:00   J.Ruan          C2     NonGrp  Dec09,23
4949  Dec09,23 15:15:10   J.Ruan      C3,C2A,C2  Kreutz  Dec09-12,23
4950  Dec09,23 17:08:04   J.Ruan          C2     Kreutz  Dec09-10,23
4951  Dec10,23 23:31:43   J.Ruan          C2     Kreutz  Dec10-11,23
4952  Dec11,23 05:24:56   J.Ruan          C2     Kreutz  Dec11,23
4953  Dec11,23 18:54:28   J.Ruan          C2     Kreutz  Dec11,23
4954  Dec11,23 21:53:05   J.Ruan          C2     Kreutz  Dec12,23
4955  Dec14,23 10:28:43   J.Ruan        C3,C2    Kreutz  Dec14-15,23
4956  Dec16,23 04:57:23   J.Ruan          C2     Kreutz  Dec15-16,23
4957  Dec17,23 04:29:21   J.Ruan          C2     Kreutz  Dec16-17,23
4958  Dec17,23 13:26:43   J.Ruan        C3,C2    Kreutz  Dec17,23
4959  Dec17,23 13:26:43   J.Ruan          C2     Kreutz  Dec18,23
4960  Dec22,23 05:14:41   W.Boonplod      C2     Meyer   Dec22,23
-- 

This does not include Zesheng's Kreutz discovery today which is certainly real, and will be SOHO-4961. I want to wait until we have all the data for it though, and that is a couple of days away.

I will take this final opportunity to remind you to send any archive SOHO reports you have. At the end of this month I will look at those, but will then not do any more archive comets until after SOHO-5000. Right now I just have one archive comet from Qicheng Zhang.

As is usually the case, NASA like to publicize events like SOHO-5000 -- and I am delighted that they do so! This increased publicity usually brings a lot of new reports and 'NEW USERS' to the project, many of whom are completely fresh to this kind of work. As you all know, Sungrazer is a very challenging project, so it can be very difficult for newcomers to get established. So please be understanding of new people that post noise or duplicate reports of known comets. I will try and add names to the "NEW USER" reports where possible, but sometimes the contributors do not send their name with the report, and there is nothing I can do. But I would ask that you all please keep an eye on reports from new participants and just check to see if the report is in fact a "real" comet. (There are a small number of you whose first ever sungrazer report was a new comet, so it can and does happen!)

On a separate subject, the 2024 transits list is now available on the site. A big "thank you" to Worachate once again for providing the excellent graphic and data. The transits list is one of the most popular pages on the Sungrazer website, so it's greatly appreciated by many people! Regarding the transits next year, it will be very interesting to see how C/2023 A3 develops in the coming months. There is the potential for it to be extremely bright but, as always, it is far too early to make a prediction about an incoming low-q Oort Cloud comet. It may not even exist by October 2024! We shall see...

Finally, a huge "THANK YOU" to every one of you who has contributed to the project this year -- even if you haven't made a discovery. Sungrazer continues to be one of the most unique, and uniquely successful, citizen science projects ever created. I am pleased to say that it is almost certain that next year the backlog of undesignated SOHO comets will be officially published, along with orbital elements and appropriate credits to all of you who found the comets! I truly cannot wait for that to happen!

For those of you that celebrate at this time of year, I wish you Happy Holidays, and I wish all of you a wonderful New Year and many successes (cometary or otherwise!) for 2024!

Karl