Hi All,

Here are SOHO comet confirmations for February 2023, a bunch more archive confirmations, and corrections to the last set of archive confirmaions...

Soho#  Date/Time of Post  Discoverer     Tel     Group   Images of...
=====================================================================
4610  Sep02,22 10:45:44   Z.Yang         C2      Kreutz  May20,97
4611  Sep03,22 02:20:58   Z.Yang         C2      Kreutz  Jun08,97
4612  Sep04,22 09:52:04   Z.Yang         C2      Kreutz  Jun11-12,97
4613  Sep04,22 01:34:24   J.Ruan,W.Zhou  C2      Kreutz  Oct25,97
4614  Sep04,22 01:37:44   J.Ruan,W.Zhou  C2      Kreutz  Oct26,97
4615  Sep04,22 11:51:38   J.Ruan,W.Zhou  C2      Kreutz  Nov11,97
4616  Sep03,22 15:45:08   H.Tan          C2      Kreutz  Dec08,97
4617  Sep03,22 08:13:59   H.Tan          C2      Kreutz  Apr28,98
4618  Sep03,22 07:42:04   H.Tan          C2      Kreutz  Apr28,98
4619  Sep03,22 09:28:34   H.Tan          C2      Kreutz  May07,98
4620  Oct16,22 01:12:03   J.Ruan,W.Zhou  C2      Kreutz  May17,98
4621  Sep03,22 05:27:31   J.Ruan,W.Zhou  C2      Kreutz  Jun06-07,98
4622  Sep04,22 01:39:51   J.Ruan,W.Zhou  C2      Kreutz  Jun13,98
4623  Sep03,22 09:56:53   J.Ruan,W.Zhou  C2      Kreutz  Jun18,98
4624  Sep03,22 00:07:02   J.Ruan,W.Zhou  C2      Kreutz  Nov28,98
4625  Sep03,22 00:09:00   J.Ruan,W.Zhou  C2      Kreutz  Dec06,98
4626  Sep11,22 23:11:56   J.Ruan,W.Zhou  C2      Kreutz  Mar26,99
4627  Sep09,22 05:56:47   J.Ruan,W.Zhou  C2      Kreutz  Mar31,99
4628  Aug25,22 11:52:02   J.Ruan,W.Zhou  C2      Kreutz  Apr25.99
4629  Aug29,22 01:24:12   J.Ruan,W.Zhou  C2      Kreutz  May08,99
4630  Aug29,22 08:44:27   J.Ruan,W.Zhou  C2      Kreutz  May24,99
4631  Aug29,22 09:51:08   J.Ruan,W.Zhou  C2      Kreutz  May28,99
4632  Sep13,22 11:44:45   J.Ruan,W.Zhou  C2      Kreutz  Jul03,99
4633  Sep14,22 01:58:56   J.Ruan,W.Zhou  C2      Kreutz  Jul05,99
4634  Aug30,22 08:44:52   Z.Chen         C2      NonGrp  Aug01,99
4635  Aug30,22 12:10:11   J.Ruan,W.Zhou  C2      Kreutz  Oct07,99
4636  Aug31,22 01:55:51   J.Ruan,W.Zhou  C2      Kreutz  Oct14,99
4637  Aug31,22 04:27:34   J.Ruan,W.Zhou  C2      Kreutz  Oct22,99
4638  Aug31,22 12:43:10   J.Ruan,W.Zhou  C2      Kreutz  Oct25,99
4639  Aug31,22 12:46:10   J.Ruan,W.Zhou  C2      Kreutz  Oct29,99
4640  Sep02,22 16:14:45   H.Tan          C2      Kreutz  Dec14,99
4641  Mar25,23 02:50:05   H.Tan          C2      NonGrp  Nov05,98
4642  Feb06,23 12:08:09   Z.Yang         C3      Kreutz  Feb06-06,23
4643  Feb08,23 18:18:53   W.Boonplod     C3      Kreutz  Feb08,23
4644  Feb09,23 01:27:49   H.Tan        C3,C2     NonGrp  Feb08-09,23
4645  Feb15,23 11:38:48   W.Boonplod     C3      Kreutz  Feb15-16,23
4646  Feb21,23 01:58:38   H.Tan          C3      Kreutz  Feb21,23
4647  Feb21,23 11:03:30   Z.Yang         C3      Kreutz  Feb21,23
4648  Feb23,23 10:31:08   W.Boonplod     C3      Kreutz  Feb23,23
4649  C/2023 A2 (SWAN)    V.Bezugly     SWAN     NonGrp  Jan/Feb,23
4650  Jul03,22 09:48:32   J.Ruan         C3      Kreutz  Aug01,96
4651  Sep05,22 14:49:10   H.Tan          C2      Kreutz  Mar09,97

Several things to mention here but first: many thanks to both Zesheng Yang and Jonathan Shanklin for pointing out the previous date errors in 4611, 4612, 4613, 4621, and 4624!

Other things, in no particular order:

• I am still not including 96P fragments yet. These continue to be challenging. We are currently assessing other data sets, and looking to gather more data, that will help us determine the extent to which 96P has fragments versus a clumpy debris trail. The reality is likely a mix of both, and yes there are clearly at least a couple of obvious, distinct fragments, but there were several reported objects that are a little less unclear. It is also now apparent that some of the observed fragments are certainly returns of the known fragments, and I still need to sort out which is which. So these will get looked at soon, but I don't want to hold up the process any longer while I wait on that. So I skipped them and moved into February.
• As you see, there are more archive comets here. These take up a lot of time, which is why realtime confirmations are slower -- plus I am busy on other projects. We fixed the software bug that was affecting the two comets I now list as 4651 and 4652. And you will also see that Vladimir's SWAN comet is on the list as 4649. (I see that there may be a new SWAN comet now, too, so that will get its own number if declared official).
• I am disappointed in you all!!! OK, that is of course a joke, but I am very surprised about something. If you take a look at Figure 3 of Qicheng Zhang's new paper, you will see that Phaethon has been visible in the LASCO C2 images almost every year since 1997, and none of you saw it until 2022! You will probably find most of that paper quite interesting to read -- it's a really interested result with implications for many (most) of SOHO's comets.
• I apologize for the occasional website outages recently, some of which were unplanned. Unfortunately this weekend there is a planned outage that will take the website entirely offline until (probably) Sunday. This is completely out of our control but we are looking into measures to prevent future maintenance like this from taking the site offline.

As always, please email me with questions, corrections, etc. I will be out of office for much of next week, but will reply as soon as I return. You can always use the sungrazercomets[at]gmail address to reach out with any urgent issues (or also if ever a very bright comet of any kind shows up, please email me immediately as I don't always look at the website every day.)

Karl