Dear All,

Here are confirmations for archive reports, and one correction.

Soho#  Date/Time of Post  Discoverer     Tel     Group   Images of...
=====================================================================
...
4439  May21,22 22:04:30 H.Tan,Z.Xu,Z.Yang C2     Kreutz  May22,22
...
4443  May02,22 11:13:17   P.Berrett      C2      Meyer   Jul12,11
4444  Jun11,22 04:51:11   H.Tan          C2      Meyer   Aug09,11
4445  Mar05,22 00:23:36   P.Berrett      C2      NonGrp  Oct16,13
4446  May01,22 09:27:53   P.Berrett      C2      Meyer   May12,14
4447  Mar03,22 00:55:33   P.Berrett      C2      Kreutz  Nov13,14
4448  May17,22 00:22:39   H.Tan          C2      Marsden Dec05,15
4449  Apr15,22 03:15:25   P.Berrett      C2      NonGrp  Feb15,16
4450  Apr15,22 10:25:15   P.Berrett      C2      NonGrp  Jul24,16
4451  Mar04,22 03:55:52   P.Berrett      C2      Kreutz  Nov24,17
4452  Jun11,22 05:04:17   H.Tan          C2      Kreutz  Apr22,18
4453  Apr28,22 08:56:38   P.Berrett      C2      NonGrp  Jan05,19
4454  May08,22 05:26:18   P.Berrett      C2      Meyer   Jan20,19
4455  Jun11,22 05:07:54   H.Tan          C2      Meyer   Apr29-30,19
4456  Apr29,22 08:05:35   P.Berrett      C2      Meyer   Aug05,19
4457  Jun11,22 05:10:50   H.Tan          C2      Meyer   Apr11,20
4458  May26,22 19:52:22   H.Tan          C2      NonGrp  Aug16-17,20
4459  Jun11,22 04:57:29   H.Tan          C2      Kracht  Sep05,20
4460  Jun11,22 05:00:39   H.Tan          C2      Kracht  Sep08,20
4461* Aug01,21 03:36am    T.Prestgard    C2      Kreutz  Nov24,20
4462# Jun21,22 11:29PM    Q.Zhang        C2      NonGrp  Jan17,21 
4463  Sep15,21 16:48:04   M.Uchina       C2      Kreutz  Sep15,21
4464  May08,22 16:31:39   H.Tan          C2      Kracht  Jan02,22
4465  Jun25,22 16:17:02   H.Tan          C2      Meyer   Jan24,10
4466  Jun25,22 16:01:47   H.Tan          C2      Marsden Jun13,11
4467  Jun25,22 16:20:02   H.Tan          C2      Kreutz  Apr17,13
4468  Jun25,22 16:28:01   H.Tan          C2      Meyer   Jun20,13
4469  Jun25,22 16:23:01   H.Tan          C2      NonGrp  Aug12,13
4470  Jun25,22 16:25:02   H.Tan          C2      Kreutz  Dec01,13
4471  Jun25,22 16:06:53   H.Tan          C2      Marsden Feb20,18
4472  Jun25,22 16:10:04   H.Tan          C2      Marsden Jun27,18
4473  Jun25,22 16:13:01   H.Tan          C2      Meyer   Nov06,18
4474  Jun25,22 16:15:03   H.Tan          C2      NonGrp  Nov07,18
--
* = SohoHunter 4892
# = Email

So originally I had confirmed all the archive comets (through SOHO-4464) and was about to start June confirmations. But then I saw Hanjie posted a set of archive claims so I decided to include those as well. Normally I try and keep archive reports in order of 'image date', but I made an exception here.

Note that I verified that SOHO-4447 was NOT the same as SOHO-2827. I also verified that SOHO-4457 was not the same as SOHO-4043 (which was just a couple of hours ahead of this one).

I could not confirm Hanjie's report from report_ht_20220527002054 - the positions did not align well at all, and I tried several times to get better observations.

SOHO-4462 is interesting. Qicheng Zhang (astronomy PhD student) emailed me to point out a very faint fragment leading 323P/SOHO in data from January last year. It's very small and faint but definitely real. Comet 323P/SOHO has been in the news recently thanks to a newly published study from Man-To Hui that used a number of ground based observations of the comet to show that it is very much in the process of being destroyed by its repeated exposure to the near-Sun environment. So the discovery of this fragment is certainly not a surprise, and fits nicely into the narrative of repeated fragmentation/disruption. Congrats on your first discovery, Qicheng!

Via Rainer Kracht, SOHO-4464 is almost certainly a return of C/2004 B3 = 2009 V10 = SOHO-3081, although the timing for C/2004 B3 seems a little off (but only by about two weeks). Sometimes I do not assign SOHO numbers to 'known' returns of SOHO comets, but I typically prefer to wait for them to receive P/xxxx designations first. So I have numbered this one.

I have designated SOHO4471 as a Marsden-group comet, although Hanjie labeled it as non-group. To me, it follows the February Marsden track quite well, although did look somewhat diffuse, which is very unusual for those objects. So we will see what the orbit ends up looking like when it gets calculated. (Speaking of which, I hope to have good news about that in the coming weeks...)

That leaves us up-to-date on archive reports, and I will probably wait until next week to post the June confirmations. As always, email me with questions, comments, etc.

Karl