Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams

Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams -- Image credits

IAUC 8240: P/2002 LZ_11

The following International Astronomical Union Circular may be linked-to from your own Web pages, but must not otherwise be redistributed (see these notes on the conditions under which circulars are made available on our WWW site).

Read IAUC 8239 SEARCH Read IAUC 8241

View IAUC 8240 in .dvi or .ps format.
IAUC number 

                                                  Circular No. 8240
Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams
INTERNATIONAL ASTRONOMICAL UNION
Mailstop 18, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.
IAUSUBS@CFA.HARVARD.EDU or FAX 617-495-7231 (subscriptions)
CBAT@CFA.HARVARD.EDU (science)
URL http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/cbat.html  ISSN 0081-0304
Phone 617-495-7440/7244/7444 (for emergency use only)


COMET P/2002 LZ_11 (LINEAR)
     An apparently asteroidal object with not-unusual motion
recorded by the LINEAR project (discovery observation from MPS
57856 below), and linked over 2002 June 5-13 and designated by the
Minor Planet Center as 2002 LZ_11 (but indicated on MPEC 2002-L64
as having a cometary orbit), was accidentally reobserved by LINEAR
on numerous occasions in July 2002 and during July-Nov. 2003 (and
by LONEOS on 2003 Oct. 16).  E. Christensen, University of Arizona,
recognized 2002 LZ_11 as having cometary appearance yesterday in
CCD images (mag 16.6-16.9) obtained accidentally by the Catalina
Sky Survey (0.68-m f/1.8 Schmidt) on 2003 Oct. 29.  Further images
yesterday by Christensen apparently confirmed the cometary
appearance, as did images obtained today at the request of the
Minor Planet Center by J. Young (0.61-m reflector at Table Mountain
Observatory), who described the object as having a round coma, 7"
across, with a featureless fanshaped tail about 15"-20" long in
p.a. 190-280 degrees.

     2002 UT             R.A. (2000) Decl.       Mag.
     June  5.29966   17 47 23.52   -14 14 39.8   18.1

The following elliptical orbital elements by B. G. Marsden are from
69 observations (all published in MPSs) made during 2002 June 5-
2003 Nov. 2 (mean residual 0".7).  The ephemeris magnitudes assume
H_10 = 11.0.

                    Epoch = 2003 Mar. 22.0 TT
     T = 2003 Mar. 15.6630 TT         Peri. = 107.9740
     e = 0.351722                     Node  = 231.1424  2000.0
     q = 2.370483 AU                  Incl. =  11.5194
       a =  3.656582 AU    n = 0.1409584    P =   6.99 years

2003/04     R. A. (2000) Decl.   Delta     r    Elong. Phase   Mag.
Nov.  7     2 50.85   +18 21.1   1.812   2.802  177.5    0.9   16.8
     17     2 43.58   +17 05.0   1.855   2.833  169.5    3.6   16.9
     27     2 37.47   +15 54.3   1.927   2.865  157.7    7.5   17.0
Dec.  7     2 33.19   +14 54.6   2.025   2.897  146.3   10.9   17.2
     17     2 31.06   +14 09.0   2.146   2.929  135.4   13.6   17.3
     27     2 31.19   +13 38.6   2.286   2.962  125.1   15.8   17.5
Jan.  6     2 33.50   +13 23.0   2.440   2.995  115.3   17.3   17.7
     16     2 37.80   +13 20.5   2.604   3.028  106.1   18.2   17.9
     26     2 43.86   +13 29.0   2.775   3.062   97.4   18.6   18.1

                      (C) Copyright 2003 CBAT
2003 November 18               (8240)            Daniel W. E. Green

Read IAUC 8239 SEARCH Read IAUC 8241

View IAUC 8240 in .dvi or .ps format.

Our Web policy. Index to the CBAT/MPC/ICQ pages.

Valid HTML 4.01!