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