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Thursday, March 22, 2012

Recovery of comet P/2005 JY126 (Catalina)

Cbet Circular No. 3065, issued on 2012, March 22, announces the recovery of comet P/2005 JY126P/2012 F4 (CATALINA) by our team; this comet was discovered on 2005, June 7.32 by Catalina Sky Survey and it was last observed on 2007, January 13.

On 2012, March 21.6 we started an observing session to recover the periodic comet P/2005 JY126. We found an object of magnitude ~19.6 located 8.5 arcsec west of the nominal position. Stacking of three R-filtered exposures, 120-sec each, obtained remotely, from the Siding Spring Faulkes Telescope South through a 2.0-m f/10.0 Ritchey-Chretien + CCD, under good seeing conditions,shows that this object appears slightly "soft" compared to the nearby field stars of similar brightness.

On 2012, March 22.4 we have been able to obtain a second night of observations by stacking of 29 R-filtered exposures, 120-sec each, obtained remotely, from the iTelescope network (near Mayhill, NM) through a 0.25-m f/3.4 reflector + CCD. 

Below you can find our recovery image of 2012, March 21.6. The red square shows the nominal position, while the circle shows where we actually found the comet.



The indicated correction to the prediction on MPC 69904 is Delta(T) = +0.01 day. The linked orbital elements by G. V. Williams, from 246 observations spanning 2005 Apr. 17-2012 Mar. 22 (mean residual 0".6), and an ephemeris appear on MPEC 2012-F54

by Giovanni Sostero, Ernesto Guido, Nick Howes and Alison Tripp

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