213P/Van Ness |
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Past, Present, and Future Orbits by Kazuo Kinoshita |
![]() Copyright © 2011 by Francois Kugel (France)
This image was taken on 2011 July 7.02 UT, using a 50-cm reflector and a CCD camera. Besides an obvious tail, there is also a faint indication of the dust lying along the comet's orbit. Discovery M. E. Van Ness (Lowell Observatory, Arizona, USA) found this comet on three images obtained on 2005 September 10 using the 59-cm LONEOS Schmidt and a CCD camera. The images were obtained between September 10.41 and 10.45. The magnitude was given as 17.0 and the "moderately condensed elongated coma" was 20 arc seconds across with a fan-shaped tail extending 245 arc seconds in PA 240 degrees. The first independent confirmation came from P. D. Kyrylenko, O. Gerashchenko, V. Lokot, and Y. Ivashchenko (Andrushivka Astronomical Observatory, Ukraine) when their images with a 0.6-m reflector and CCD camera on September 10.8 revealed a magnitude of 16.3-16.5 and a tail extending 2 arc minutes in PA 250 degrees. Prediscovery observations were identified on images obtained by the Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) program (New Mexico, USA). These were obtained with the 1.0-m reflector and CCD camera, and included five images between August 4.39 and August 4.43, four images between August 16.39 and August 16.44, and five images between August 31.33 and August 31.38. The comet appeared stellar on these images. The nuclear magnitude was given as 17.8-19.3 on the 4th, 18.6-19.4 on the 16th, and 18.5-20.1 on the 31st. Historical Highlights
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