Friday, April 19, 2013

New Comet: C/2013 G9 (TENAGRA)

Cbet nr. 3478, issued on 2013, April 19, announces the discovery of a apparently asteroidal object (discovery magnitude ~19.6) by M. Schwartz and P. R. Holvorcem on CCD images obtained with the Tenagra II 0.41-m f/3.75 astrograph located near Nogales, AZ, U.S.A.

After posting on the Minor Planet Center's NEOCP webpage, this apparently asteroidal object as been found to show cometary features by our team.

Stacking of 12 R-filtered exposures, 50-sec each, obtained remotely from Haleakala-Faulkes Telescope North on 2013, April 18.4, through a 2.0-m f/10.0 Ritchey-Chretien + CCD (operated by LCOGT), shows that this object is a comet: compact coma about 5" in diameter elongated toward PA 110

The new comet has been designated COMET C/2013 G9 (TENAGRA).
 
Below you can see our image. Click on it for a bigger version.
  

In the elaboration below you can see the shape difference between the comet (on the left) and background stars (on the right). 


M.P.E.C. 2013-H23 assigns the following preliminary parabolic orbital elements to comet C/2013 G9: T 2015 Jan. 24.08; e= 1.0; Peri. = 207.84; q = 5.17;  Incl.= 145.90

Images of C/2013 G9 (TENAGRA) taken in collaboration with the Faulkes Project and Horbury Academy - Paul Campbell

by Ernesto Guido & Nick Howes

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

"M.P.E.C. 2013-H23 assigns the following preliminary parabolic orbital elements to comet C/2013 G9: T 2015 Jan. 24.08; e= 1.0; Peri. = 207.84; q = 5.17; Incl.= 145.90"

Should e not be larger than 1.0 to be parabolic?

Anonymous said...

It has been a very productive two weeks for comet discovery!

From G1 Kowalski up to G9 Tenagra - 9 comets in total.

Team said...

The preliminary value of the orbit's eccentricity of C/2013 G9 is e = 1 , so the orbit is parabolic.

Ciao,
Ernesto