Hi All,

Here are all confirmations for most of March 2024, including SOHO-5000!

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
--  

Getting the obvious out of the way again -- CONGRATULATIONS once more to Hanjie and to all of you for reaching 5,000 SOHO comet discoveries. I still cannot believe that we reached a number like that -- it was in the low 600's when I joined the project! Hopefully by now you have all seen the various press releases and videos for the milestone. So the next challenge for you all is to discover a comet on April 7 or 8 that will be visible during the total eclipse that crossed North America on the afternoon of April 8!

Now, back to confirmations: you hopefully saw my recent update on some of the comet confusion. Obviously that was resolved. I was correct that Jiangao's first non-group report was definitely the same Marsden-group comet as Hanjie's first report. Jiangao's second non-group report was indeed a non-group comet. It is quite a coincidence that it was initially so close to the first object, but coincidences happen. I have confirmation from two different, and extremely reliable, sources that this was indeed the case. Then for Hanjie's second Marsden-group report (SOHO-5000), there was again no doubt it was a Marsden group comet, that could not be linked to Jiangao's C3 non-group report. There are no plausible matches in the discovery archives for either of these Marsden comets, so possibly (probably) they were part of the same (completely inert) object one or two orbits ago, and then recently split and became active. That seems to be what happens with the Marsden and Kracht-group comets.

And here we are, only three days later and SOHO-5000 is already in the rearview mirror, as we're up to 5,002 SOHO comets. I really cannot imagine that SOHO can reach 6,000 comets but there is only one way to find out...

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

Karl