Hi All,

Here are SOHO confirmations for all of March and April 2024.

Soho#  Date/Time of Post  Discoverer     Tel     Group   Images of...
=====================================================================
4991  Mar02,24 01:08:29   H.Tan          C3,C2   Kreutz  Mar02-03,24
4992  Mar02,24 14:57:51   H.Tan           C3     Kreutz  Mar02,24
4993  Mar07,24 01:35:48   H.Tan           C3     Kreutz  Mar07,24
4994  Mar12,24 22:49:10   H.Tan          C3,C2   Kreutz  Mar12-13,24
4995  Mar14,24 01:42:40   J.Ruan          C3     Kreutz  Mar14,24
4996  Mar14,24 02:17:26   J.Ruan          C3     Kreutz  Mar14,24
4997  Mar21,24 03:45:49   R.Pickard       C2     Kreutz  Mar21,24
4998  Mar22,24 19:54:50   J.Ruan         C3,C2   Marsden Mar22-23,24   
4999  Mar23,24 02:21:03   J.Ruan          C3     NonGrp  Mar23,24
5000  Mar24,24 23:52:20   H.Tan           C2     Marsden Mar25,24 
5001  Mar26,24 06:46:19   J.Ruan          C2     Kreutz  Mar26,24
5002  Mar26,24 16:19:27   H.Tan          C3,C2   Kreutz  Mar26-27,24
5003  Mar28,24 16:32:00   M.Biesiada      C2     Meyer   Mar28,24
5004  Mar28,24 17:26:58   H.Tan          C3,C2   Kreutz  Mar28-29,24  
5005  Mar30,24 04:51:31   E.Banach,J.Ruan C2     Kreutz  Mar30,24
5006  Apr01,24 07:34:44   J.Ruan          C2     Kreutz  Apr01,24
5007  Apr03,24 10:50:31  Ruan,Banach,Yang C3,C2  Kreutz  Apr03-04,24
5008  Apr08,24 08:11:54   W.Boonplod     C3,C2   Kreutz  Apr08,24
5009  Apr13,24 16:07:53   Z.Xu            C2     Kreutz  Apr13,24
5010  Apr24,24 12:38:25   Z.Xu           C3,C2   Kreutz  Apr24,24
5011  Apr30,24 20:53:41   W.Boonplod     C3,C2   Kreutz  Apr30-May01,24
--  

This is the complete set for March and April, with the latter being an extremely quiet month for comets. In fact that is the quietest April we have had since 1997! May doesn't look particularly busy either. I guess that is the random nature of Sungrazers, but this is particularly odd.

Note that Jiangao's report on March 29 was the same as SOHO-5004. He also reported SOHO-5005 on SOHOHunter at the same time as Eryk did on the Sungrazer report page. We don't know exact timings for how long it takes SOHOHunter reports to appear, so it seems reasonable to make this a joint-credit discovery.

I could not confirm Zhijian's unretracted report on April 26 or Hanjie's report on April 30. For the latter, the data gap before those images would have told us if it was real, but that data was completely lost.

I will look at the May reports at the end of the month. I also have a couple of archive reports from Jiangao, and still need to clear up some confusion about Marsden-group comets in 2023. I also need to finish up PSP confirmations from the last data release. ALSO... (clearly I have plenty to keep me busy...) I owe you all some information about recent non-group discoveries made by Rainer Kracht. He has identified a few overlooked non-group comets in C2 that can be linked to other C2 non-group comets, i.e. they are short period objects. I think one of them is due to return in August of this year, but I forget the details right now. I will post something separate about that another time but the point here is that there are still undiscovered non-group comets in C2!. Probably not a surprise to some of you, but I just wanted to let you know that there are still discoveries waiting to be made, some of which could actually turn out to be quite important short-period comets! So if you are bored, and have some time... get hunting! :)

As always, please email me with questions, comments, complaints, concerns, etc.

Karl