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Many new faint comets have been discovered in the past few weeks, nearly all by automated equipment designed to find near-earth asteroids and comets. Meanwhile, Comet Lee swings into our morning sky as Comet LINEAR (1998 T1) and Periodic Comet Tempel 2 pass through opposition.
The LINEAR program in New Mexico has found eight more comets, all faint and some with large perihelion distances. Lowell Observatory's LONEOS program found two, one named for Brian Skiff and one for Bill Ferris. The SOHO satellite discovered three sungrazer comets headed into the sun.
COMET HUNTING NOTES: Steve Lee's comet discovery in April was the third accidental find of the past six Southern Hemisphere visual comet discoveries. That is a high percentage considering that there are
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only two other accidental finds among the 80 discoveries visually found since 1975. What does this mean? Are comet hunters getting lazy?
If the comets were outside typical comet hunting areas, then comet hunters would tend to miss them. For two of the comets this may be true, as the discovery elongations of the three were 72, 103, and 120 degrees from the sun. Additionally, if the comets brighten rapidly before discovery, then the usual comet hunting methods may miss them. A third reason for more accidental finds is an increase in activity among non-comet hunters. With the Internet making it easier to report suspicious objects, and the Wilson award motivating the reporting of new comets, it is likely that accidental comet discoveries by amateurs will continue at a brisk rate in the Southern Hemisphere, a region not well covered by the automated search programs.
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