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

 comet 328P/LONEOS-TUCKER (= 1998 QP54)

Discovery: [ IAUC 7012 ]

 On Sept. 13, Roy A. Tucker (Tucson, AZ) reported his discovery of a comet in the course of his CCD asteroid-astrometry program with a 0.36-m

f/11 Schmidt-Cassegrain at the Goodricke-Pigott Observatory.  G. V. Williams, Minor Planet Center, then identified the comet with 1998 QP54,which had been reported by E. Bowell (observer W. D. Ferris, measurer B. W. Koehn) as an apparently quite ordinary minor planet in the course of

LONEOS, the Lowell Observatory Near-Earth Object Search (cf. MPC 32398; the observations themselves, on Aug. 27 and 28, were published on MPS 2052). Williams then also identified single-night observations (also on Aug. 28) by LINEAR as belonging to the same object.  Information about the object was then placed in The NEO Confirmation Page.  In response, J. Ticha reported observations made at the Klet Observatory that showed a faint coma (diameter 17") and a 35" tail in p.a. 226 deg, and L. Sarounova reported from the Ondrejov Observatory on a narrow tail 5' long in p.a. 135 deg and only a small coma.  Observations were also reported by T. Spahr from the Catalina Sky Survey.  The LONEOS and Tucker discovery observations are listed here for reference, and the complete set of currently available observations is given on MPEC 1998-R27, which is also the source for the orbital elements and ephemeris below.  The comet is clearly of short period, and it made a close approach to Jupiter early in 1992.

Recovery: ( CBET 4146 )

Alex Gibbs discovered an 18th magnitude comet during the Catalina Sky Survey with the 0.68m Schmidt on 2015 September 30.13. He suggested that it might be a recovery of P/LONEOS-Tucker, which had been missed at its 2007 return. Other astrometrists confirmed the comet, and Gareth Williams computed a linked orbit. The correction to the predicted time of perihelion in published elements for the return was -1.9 days