David Levy has recently discovered his 22nd comet, C/2006 T1 (Levy). It's currently in Leo and is approximately eleventh magnitude.

An ephemeris is posted at http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/Ephemerides/Comets/2006T1.html

A finder chart is available at www.davelane.ca/levy.pdf

Dave Mitsky

Great info Dave, thanks for posting it.

Good news for us, Bad news for Jupiter.

nice...


but can i ask how does he know he's discovered it?

im not doubting or nothin just wondering ima noob at this, but theres like so many objects in sky it'd be hard to know if u found somthin new =/

I am fairly new here too, but I would guess that it takes time, money and patiences to find new objects.

He would have had to first locate a moving object using multiple images of a section of space, and after a moving object was located he would need to  monitor it for a while to see where it was moving from and too, how fast, etc. Then he would need to compare that object to other known objects that are traveling in a smilar direction and speed.

If the object he was watching does not match any other cataloged objects, then it has been discovered.

The object is probably giving off a glow, or maybe even a tail which helps with classifing it as a comet.

I dont think asteroids or meteors give off a glow so they are much harder to find\track.

Like I said, I am a newbie too, but based off of what I have read this is how I understand it to work.

"but can i ask how does he know he's discovered it?

im not doubting or nothin just wondering ima noob at this, but theres like so many objects in sky it'd be hard to know if u found somthin new"

Comets move with respect to background stars. With enough observations over time cometary orbits can be calculated. Furthermore, the sky has been thoroughly cataloged of the bright deep-sky objects that could possibly be mistaken for comets for many, many years. Currently observable comets are similarly well known.

http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/CometDiscovery.html

This was Levy's ninth visual discovery. He spent countless hours sweeping the sky looking for a fuzzy object that shouldn't be there. No photography or imaging was involved. He tells the story of his discovery at http://skytonight.com/news/4306207.html

I spent some time observing with David in July of 2004. We were at Lake Titicaca in Bolivia. He was doing comet sweeps with a 10" Starmaster, while a friend of mine and I were using a 22" Starmaster to observe southern hemisphere DSOs.

Dave Mitsky

Note: embedded links do not seem to be working for me at the moment.

Delphinus09 wrote:

I am fairly new here too, but I would guess that it takes time, money and patiences to find new objects.

Depends on the object. Let's say you want to find a "new" uncatalogued galaxy. Probably all you have to do is retrieve an image from the DSS (http://stdatu.stsci.edu/cgi-bin/dss_form) and hope there's something in that particular area of the sky - which is very likely. So basically completely free but having it with your name on it is a bit more complicated. With comets, you just scan the skies multiple times for faint fuzzies time & time again...

And I'm pretty sure you still can find new open clusters visually as well.

/Jake

Amateur astronomers still discover a fair number of new comets (the only objects in astronomy that are formally named for their discoverers, by the way) each year but it is increasingly difficult to do so with professional automated search systems like LINEAR, LONEOS, and NEAT. Comet hunters in the southern hemisphere have somewhat of an advantage, since they don't have that kind of competition yet.

However, quite a few asteroids are still being discovered with CCD imaging by amateurs like Sky & Telescope's Dennis di Cicco - http://skytonight.com/observing/objects/asteroids/3305146.html?showAll=y&c=y - and others.

Not many deep sky objects have been discovered by amateurs during the past century, although there are a few exceptions like the nebula near M78 in Orion that Jay McNeil discovered in 2004.

http://www.rc-astro.com/nebulae/mcneil_anim.htm#

http://spacsun.rice.edu/~has/jay_mcneil.htm

Actually there are quite a few deep sky objects discovered by amateurs. The Yahoo group Deep Sky Hunters is a fine example. Mostly asterisms/open clusters/planetary nebulae there.

/Jake

Yes, but asterisms, as we all know, are merely chance groupings of unrelated stars that bear a resemblance to something or other and are no more deep sky objects than the recognized constellations are. I've "discovered" a few asterisms myself.

There have been nebulae and possible open clusters identified from data from professional surveys but I wasn't addressing that fact. Many comets have been discovered using SOHO data but without access to that professional data amateurs would never have the capability to make those discoveries. It's simply beyond the capability of amateur instruments.

Newcomers to astronomy sometimes have the mistaken notion that the sky is full of undiscovered objects that they're likely to chance upon now that they've gotten a small telescope. That's the point I was trying to make.

Dave Mitsky

Point taken. However, I personally like the thought of it still being possible to find new objects visually just as comets. Playing the lottery you know... Of course when you take a look at the DSH data you can see 99% of the objects are found either with DSS or Guide and so on but still some visual finds here & there. My point was anyone can find new deep sky objects using DSS, even when its cloudy ;) Finding some visually you need luck.

/Jake