Electronic Telegram No. 5098 Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams Mailing address: 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/2022 C2 (PANSTARRS) R. Weryk, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Western Ontario, reports the discovery of another comet in images obtained in poor seeing (full-width-at-half-maximum around 2") with the Pan-STARRS2 1.8-m Ritchey-Chretien reflector at Haleakala, Hawaii (discovery observations tabulated below); four 45-s w-band survey images show a diffuse coma only marginally larger than the seeing (2".1 FWHM), with a tail 4" long toward p.a. 270 degrees in stacked images. 2022 UT R.A. (2000) Decl. Mag. Feb. 2.54706 13 47 57.59 - 1 10 58.4 20.8 2.55719 13 47 57.87 - 1 10 57.6 20.6 2.56733 13 47 58.14 - 1 10 56.7 20.6 2.57751 13 47 58.41 - 1 10 56.2 20.6 Weryk adds that three 40-s gri-band follow-up images obtained by R. Wainscoat with the 3.6-m Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope at Mauna Kea (queue observer L. Wells; queue coordinator T. Burdullis) on Feb. 3.6 UT in 1".2 seeing show a very condensed coma of size 1".5 (FWHM) with an obvious broad tail at least 4" long spanning p.a. 245-300 degrees. After the comet was posted on the Minor Planet Center's PCCP webpage, L. Buzzi (Varese, Italy) writes that eighty-seven stacked 60-s CCD exposures taken on Feb. 6.2 UT by G. Galli and himself with a 0.84-m f/3.5 reflector in very good conditions (and measured by A. Aletti) show a very condensed 5" coma, slightly elongated in the east-west direction, with a very faint tail 7" long in p.a. about 300 degrees; the magnitude was given as 20.3. The available astrometry appears on MPEC 2022-D01 (wth several observers reporting magnitudes in the range 19.3-19.9). The following preliminary orbital elements by S. Nakano (CBAT) are from 40 observations spanning Feb. 2-13 (mean residual 0".3), and indicate with some uncertainty that the comet passed 1.30 AU from Saturn in 2001 Dec. and 1.10 AU from Jupiter in 2009 Jan. T = 2022 July 28.70122 TT Peri. = 87.25931 e = 0.4485424 Node = 135.52550 2000.0 q = 3.3963450 AU Incl. = 10.00984 a = 6.1588508 AU n = 0.06448438 P = 15.28 years The following ephemeris by the undersigned from the above orbital elements uses photometric power-law parameters H = 11.5 and 2.5n = 10 for the magnitudes. Date TT R. A. (2000) Decl. Delta r Elong. Phase Mag. 2022 01 21 13 40.97 -01 17.7 3.342 3.591 96.7 15.8 19.7 2022 01 31 13 46.72 -01 13.7 3.182 3.572 105.4 15.4 19.5 2022 02 10 13 51.00 -00 58.9 3.030 3.554 114.4 14.6 19.4 2022 02 20 13 53.66 -00 33.4 2.890 3.536 123.8 13.4 19.3 2022 03 02 13 54.60 +00 01.8 2.764 3.520 133.4 11.8 19.2 2022 03 12 13 53.80 +00 45.0 2.657 3.504 143.3 9.8 19.1 2022 03 22 13 51.40 +01 33.3 2.572 3.489 153.0 7.4 19.0 2022 04 01 13 47.66 +02 23.3 2.512 3.476 161.9 5.1 18.9 2022 04 11 13 42.99 +03 10.4 2.480 3.463 167.0 3.7 18.9 2022 04 21 13 37.95 +03 50.3 2.475 3.452 164.0 4.6 18.8 2022 05 01 13 33.12 +04 19.5 2.497 3.441 155.9 6.9 18.9 2022 05 11 13 29.03 +04 35.1 2.544 3.432 146.5 9.3 18.9 2022 05 21 13 26.14 +04 36.2 2.613 3.423 136.9 11.6 18.9 2022 05 31 13 24.73 +04 22.8 2.702 3.416 127.6 13.6 19.0 2022 06 10 13 24.96 +03 55.9 2.805 3.410 118.6 15.2 19.1 2022 06 20 13 26.86 +03 17.1 2.921 3.405 110.0 16.3 19.1 2022 06 30 13 30.37 +02 28.2 3.044 3.401 101.8 17.0 19.2 NOTE: These 'Central Bureau Electronic Telegrams' are sometimes superseded by text appearing later in the printed IAU Circulars. (C) Copyright 2022 CBAT 2022 February 16 (CBET 5098) Daniel W. E. Green