Copyright © All rights reserved. Made By Erik Bryssinck  Terms of use  |  Privacy policy

240P/NEAT - (P/2002 X2 = P/2010 P1)

IAUC 8029: P/2002 X2

K. J. Lawrence reported the discovery of a comet of mag 18.4 by the NEAT team (which includes also R. Bambery, E. Helin, S. Pravdo, M. Hicks, and R. Thicksten) from CCD images taken with the 1.2-m Schmidt telescope at Palomar on December 7.17. Following posting on the NEO Confirmation Page, J. Ticha and M. Tichy found the comet to show a 7" coma and a 14" tail in p.a. 45 deg on Klet images taken on Dec. 8.8 UT. P. Holvorcem that the co- addition of three 120-s exposures taken with the Tenagra II telescope at Nogales, AZ, on Dec. 8.20 shows a coma with diameter about 7" and a tail about 14" long in p.a. about 55 deg. F. B. Zoltowski, Edgewood, NM, notes that CCD images taken with a 0.3-m reflector on Dec. 9.15 shows the comet as diffuse with a 15" coma diameter and a possible faint tail in p.a. 240 deg. [IAUC 8029, 2002 December 9]

IAUC 9159: 240P/2010 P1 - recovery comet P/2002 X2

2002 X2 (P/NEAT) was independently recovered between August 9 and 11 by H. Taylor (Rayle, GA, U.S.A., 25-cm reflector), by H. Sato (Tokyo, Japan; remotely, 25-cm reflector, RAS Observatory, Mayhill, NM, U.S.A.; 20" coma and 30" tail in p.a. 260 deg), by L. Elenin (Lyubertsy, Russia; remotely, 45-cm f/2.8 astrograph, ISON-NM Observatory, Mayhill; 50" tail), and by T. Yusa (telescope data same as for Sato; faint 25" tail in p.a. 252 deg). The indicated correction to the prediction by S. Nakano (ICQ 2009/ 2010 Comet Handbook, p. 108) is Delta(T) = -0.63 day