COMET P/2008 R6 (GIACOBINI) = 205P/Giacobini

IAUC nr.8975, issued on 2008, September 10th, announces the discovery of a 15-magnitude comet by Koichi Itagaki and Hiroshi Kaneda in the Aquarius-Aquila border. It was described having a coma diameter of about 25-arcsec, and a tail 2-arcmin long pointing toward east-southeast. We performed some follow-up of this object with the 0.45-m, f/4.4 reflector + CCD from the Remanzacco Observatory (Italy) on 2008, Sept.10.8, and with the "Skylive" 0.30-m f/6 reflector at Catania, Italy, on Sept. 10.9.Also from our stackings the coma and tail of this comet was obvious:

http://tinyurl.com/3jnbwp

Maik Meyer suggested that this apparently new comet actually was a return of D/1896 R2 (Giacobini); this link was confirmed by Nakano.Updated ephemerids are available at the Minor Planet Center website:

http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/iau/Ephemerides/Comets/0205P.html

by Virgilio Gonano, Paul Camilleri, Ernesto Guido and Giovanni Sostero