Dear All,

Here is my first set of confirmations on the new website layout!

Soho#  Date/Time of Post  Discoverer     Tel     Group   Images of...
=====================================================================
XC97  Feb02,21 02:37:34	  P.Bhagat       C3      NonGrp? Feb02,21
4129  Feb11,21 10:54:03   W.Boonplod     C3      Kreutz  Feb11-12,21
4130  Feb11,21 11:30:35   W.Boonplod     C3      Kreutz  Feb11-12,21
4131  Feb12,21 05:21:14   W.Boonplod     C3      Kreutz  Feb12,21
4132  Feb13,21 21:43:35   W.Boonplod   C3,C2A    NonGrp  Feb13-16,21
4133  Feb14,21 05:34:01   S.Liwo         C3      Kreutz  Feb14,21
4134  Feb23,21 05:28:12   P.Berrett      C2      NonGrp  Feb19,21
4135  Feb24,21 01:30:59   W.Boonplod     C3      Kreutz  Feb24,21
4136  Feb24,21 22:59:36   W.Boonplod     C3      Kreutz  Feb24-25,21
4137  Feb25,21 19:35:34   W.Boonplod     C3      Kreutz  Feb25-26,21
4138  Feb26,21 16:56:02   W.Boonplod     C3      Kreutz  Feb26-27,21
4139  C/2021 D1 (SWAN)    M.Mattiazzo   SWAN     NonGrp  N/A 

Couple of things to note about these. First, Parth - I'm sorry but I was unable to confirm your object as a definite comet. I spent a good hour or two trying to get good measures but no matter what I did, I just could not find enough points to line up and allow us to get an orbit. But I have recorded it as an x-comet, because there were three or four reasonable points in there. I was also unable to confirm Trygve's comet from Feb11,21 13:02:24

Worachate's Marsden group comet from Feb08,21 04:55:28 was the return of P/1999 J6. This is the fifth time we have seen it, and I have submitted the astrometry to the MPC in the hopes that it will get a permanent P/SOHO designation.

Things seem to be going fairly smoothly with the new site design, which makes me happy! I'm sure you've all seen the updated discovery tables that now (mostly) contain links to the x,y coordinates of the comets. One day, we will also provide the reduced astrometry for each comet as and when they get published. I'm not providing the astrometry for the older comets just yet because our plan is to recalculate all of them using our new astrometry calibrations/corrections that we've developed. The astrometry data quality now is better than it ever has been, so hopefully that will give us more confidence in the orbits of the comets.

There are still a few old/dead links on the website, which I am slowly getting around to fixing. If there's any features you'd like to see, you're welcome to email me and make those suggestions (I can't make promises, but already a few suggested features have made it into the current site.)

One final thing - regarding "Endorsing" comets. First, a reminder to please NOT 'Endorse' your own reports -- only endorse other people's reports, and only if you are completely certain the comet is real. Second thing: remember that with this new site, more than one person can 'Endorse' the same report and I am quite happy for you to do that - it makes me confident that the comet will be real!

OK, that's all for now. I'll start on March confirmations on Friday and hopefully post those next week. As always, email me with questions, etc.

Karl

EDIT/UPDATE: I do still have a couple of archive reports pending, including STEREO. I'll get to those soon...
EDIT/UPDATE 2: Fixed a typo in the report time for SOHO-4136, and added SOHO-4139 == C/2021 D1 (SWAN). Thanks to Worachate for reminding me of these!