Confirmations for October 2022 and PSP's First Discovery!

Hi All,

Here are SOHO confirmations for October 2022.


Soho#  Date/Time of Post  Discoverer     Tel     Group   Images of...
=====================================================================
4528  Oct05,22 13:35:13   W.Boonplod  H1,C3,C2   Kreutz  Oct05,22
4529  Oct07,22 12:22:50   Z.Yang      H1,C3,C2   Kreutz  Oct07-08,22
4530  Oct08,22 23:51:37   H.Tan       H1,C3,C2   Kreutz  Oct08-09,22
4531  Oct13,22 02:19:49   Z.Yang      H1,C3,C2   Kreutz  Oct12-13,22
4532  Oct13,22 18:47:10   W.Boonplod    H1,C2    Kreutz  Oct13,22
4533  Oct14,22 06:29:41   J.Ruan    H1,C2A,C3,C2 Kreutz  Oct13-15,22
4534  Oct14,22 18:38:56   J.Ruan         C2      Kreutz  Oct14,22
4535  Oct14,22 22:06:22   W.Boonplod     C2      Kreutz  Oct15,22
4536  Oct17,22 12:41:11   J.Ruan         C2      Kreutz  Oct17,22
4537  Oct20,22 09:10:19   J.Ruan       C3,H1     NonGrp  Oct20,22
4538  Oct20,22 09:21:08   J.Ruan       C3,H1     NonGrp  Oct20-21,20
4539  Oct20,22 10:25:45   J.Ruan         C2      NonGrp  Oct20,22
4540  Oct20,22 17:53:42   H.Tan     H1,C2A,C3,C2 Kreutz  Oct18-22,22
4541  Oct21,22 09:21:41   W.Boonplod  H1,C3,C2   Kreutz  Oct20-22,22
4542  Oct21,22 16:07:04   Z.Yang         C2      Kreutz  Oct21,22
4543  Oct25,22 01:53:33   Z.Yang         C2      Kreutz  Oct25,22
4544  Oct25,22 10:16:39   Z.Yang      H1,C3,C2   Kreutz  Oct24-26,22
4545  Oct27,22 15:51:44   H.Tan     H1,C2A,C3,C2 Kreutz  Oct27-29,22
4546  Oct28,22 22:29:13   H.Tan          C2      Kreutz  Oct29,22
4547  Oct28,22 23:40:13   W.Boonplod  H1,C3,C2   Kreutz  Oct28-29,22
4548  Oct28,22 22:29:36   Z.Yang         C2      Kreutz  Oct29,22
4549  Oct29,22 22:26:42   P.Berrett      C2      Kreutz  Oct29,22
4550  Oct30,22 09:40:22   H.Tan          C2      Kreutz  Oct30,22
4551  Oct31,22 04:29:16   Z.Yang         C2      Kreutz  Oct31,22  

I had planned to get these out three weeks ago, but of course other things got in the way. I will try and get at least the November reports done before the end of the year, but with travel and the holidays, that might be tricky so no promises.

So as you can probably tell from the title of this post, there's an exciting announcement to make! On September 25, 2022, Peter Berrett reported the following object to me, which he found in our Parker Solar Probe (PSP) "WISPR-I" Encounter 12 images:

 DATE       TIME      X    Y [(0,0) lower left]
 2022-05-29 02:00:19  125  203
 2022-05-29 02:15:19  113  205
 2022-05-29 02:30:19  103  208
 2022-05-29 02:45:19  98   211
 2022-05-29 03:00:19  90   214
 2022-05-29 03:15:19  82   217
 2022-05-29 03:30:19  75   220
 2022-05-29 03:45:19  67   223
 2022-05-29 04:00:19  60   226
 2022-05-29 04:15:19  52   229
 2022-05-29 04:30:19  44   232
 2022-05-29 04:45:19  37   235
 2022-05-29 05:00:19  29   238
 2022-05-29 05:15:19  22   241
 2022-05-29 05:30:19  13   245
 2022-05-29 05:45:19   6   249 

There was no SOHO Kreutz reported around that time that matches up with this report. There was a Meyer group comet but we have verified that this is indeed a Kreutz, and presumably one that was just a little too faint to be seen in LASCO C3. Here's an animation:

We have seen several Kreutz comets in the PSP/WISPR data, usually right at the start of each encounter, but all until now have been known objects. Unfortunately the Kreutz orbit is only in the instrument field of view for a very short period, or we would be seeing lots more discoveries like this.

Anyway, many congratulations to Peter, who puts in a huge amount of work looking at a variety of data sources for new comets. It is well-deserved that he should make the first PSP discovery! We are still working on improving our process for astrometric measurements in the WISPR data, so I have not submitted this to the MPC yet, but I will do as soon as we have good quality astrometry.

As always, email with questions, comments, corrections, etc.

Karl