Electronic Telegram No. 2607
Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams
INTERNATIONAL ASTRONOMICAL UNION
CBAT Director:  Daniel W. E. Green; Hoffman Lab 209; Harvard University;
 20 Oxford St.; Cambridge, MA  02138; U.S.A.
e-mail:  cbatiau@eps.harvard.edu (alternate cbat@iau.org)
URL http://www.cbat.eps.harvard.edu/index.html
Prepared using the Tamkin Foundation Computer Network


COMET P/2010 WK (LINEAR)
     Another apparently asteroidal object discovered by the LINEAR project
(discovery observation tabulated below; first published on MPS 357719) has
also been found to be cometary in appearance by CCD astrometrists.  H. Sato,
Tokyo, Japan, observing remotely with a 0.50-m f/6.8 reflector (located at the
RAS Observatory near Mayhill, NM, U.S.A.) on Dec. 25.4 UT, found a diffuse 15"
coma and no tail; his exposures on Dec. 25.1 suggest that the coma had
apparently expanded to 1' in diameter.  K. Kadota (Ageo, Japan, 0.25-m f/5
reflector) found the object to be diffuse with central condensation and a coma
of diameter 0'.8 (total mag 16.0), with no visible tail.  After hearing about
the cometary appearance of this object, Luca Buzzi (Varese, Italy) writes that
Enrico Prosperi (Castelmartini, Italy) found the object to be clearly diffuse
in his stack of CCD images taken with his 0.35-m reflector on 12.0.  Buzzi
then obtained a series of images on Dec. 26.72 with a 0.38-m f/6.8 reflector
under moderate seeing that showed the object to be diffuse with a 15"-20" coma
but no tail; another series of images taken by Buzzi in better seeing on Dec.
26.8 reveal a 20" round coma and no tail.  S. Foglia writes that a 12" round
coma (total red mag 16.2-16.3) is found after stacking five 120-s CCD
exposures taken by S. Baroni, L. Buzzi, P. Concari, G. Galli, M. Tombelli,
and himself remotely with a 0.18-m f/7.3 refractor (located at the Tzec Maun
Observatory near Cloudcroft, NM, U.S.A.) on Dec. 27.3.

     2010 UT             R.A. (2000) Decl.       Mag.   Observer
     Nov. 17.34056    5 20 13.88   +42 50 34.8   18.4   LINEAR

New astrometry, the following elliptical orbital elements by G. V. Williams,
and an ephemeris appear on MPEC 2010-Y30.

                    Epoch = 2010 Oct. 11.0 TT
     T = 2010 Oct. 19.6926 TT         Peri. =  40.8033
     e = 0.692399                     Node  =  11.5004  2000.0
     q = 1.765101 AU                  Incl. =  11.4812
       a =  5.738291 AU    n = 0.0717018    P =  13.75 years


NOTE: These 'Central Bureau Electronic Telegrams' are sometimes
      superseded by text appearing later in the printed IAU Circulars.

                         (C) Copyright 2010 CBAT
2010 December 27                 (CBET 2607)              Daniel W. E. Green