Sky & Telescope Magazine
 Left:
This image of Comet Utsunomiya-Jones is a seven-image composite
taken on the night of November 29th by Ian Griffin at Auckland
Observatory in New Zealand. The field is about 10 minutes across.
Anyone planning
a trip to South America or Australia in December should be sure
to pack a pair of binoculars. That's your best chance of seeing
a new comet discovered independently on November 18th by Japanese
observer Syogo Utsunomiya and on the 25th by Albert Jones in New
Zealand. Right now the object is between 6th and 7th magnitude,
and thus easily seen in binoculars, but it's observable only from
the Southern Hemisphere and won't reach northern skies any time
soon. Comet Utsunomiya-Jones (C/2000 W1) has a retrograde orbit
that reaches perihelion just inside the orbit of Mercury in late
December. However, by then it will be lost behind the Sun. The
comet won't emerge from the glare until late January, by which
time it should have faded to 10th magnitude as it recedes back
into interplanetary space.
When Utsunomiya
first spotted the object, it was an 8th-magnitude blur in Vela
and headed south fast -- at nearly 5° per day. In fact, initially
the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams (CBAT) in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, was unable to confirm the find. Jones picked it
up through his 3-inch refractor. Now 80, Jones may have set the
all-time record for time elapsed between consecutive comet discoveries.
"He found C/1946 P1 on August 6, 1946," comments veteran
skywatcher John Bortle, "so his new find followed the first
by 54 years and almost 4 months!"
|
