IAUC nr. 8912, published yesterday, announces the discovery of a new periodic comet, P/2008 A2 by means of the LINEAR survey.
Preliminary orbital elements from the Minor Planet Center (see MPEC 2008-B18), report a short period Jupiter-family orbit, with P= 5.7 years, perihelion occuring on 2008, June 12 (q= 1.3 AU):
This comet is supposed to remain an unremarkable object, since its maximum brightness will be close to m1= 17.4, around the time of its perihelion. We imaged this object on 2008, Jan. 15.4 and 16.4, while it was in the NEO-CP. Click on the image below (36x60sec unfiltered exposures) for a bigger version:
In our stackings we didn't found any convincing evidence of a cometary features, probably because the extremely tiny coma reported by onlyone observer (J. Young, Table Mountain 0-61m reflector + CCD: 4"-6"diameter) was well below our threshold limit.
Ernesto Guido and Giovanni Sostero
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