COMET P/2009 Q1 (HILL)

On Aug. 27 R. E. Hill with the Catalina Sky Survey 0.68-m Schmidt found this diffuse comet with no clear condensation and a 12"-15" coma with a broad, diffuse tail about 20" long in p.a. 250 deg. The object was then included in the neo confirmation page (NEOCP) for other observatories to confirm and follow up.

On Aug. 29.0, I stacked twenty 2-min images to find the object very diffuse with a round coma of size 12" and a tail 20" long in p.a. 249 deg.

This (above) is a cropped non-zoomed stack composition of 29 images of 2 minutes each taken with the .40m Ritchey-Chretien F10 + CCD at La Cañada, the North is up and the East left.

Above, zoom 4x

References :

MPEC 2009-Q67
IAUC 9067 P/2009 Q1(suscribers)
Remanzacco observatory report

This Jupiter family comet has a period about 13 years.

Descubriendo el cosmos desde casa (CosmoCaixa 25-26 Sept)

Jornadas auspiciadas por CosmoCaixa Alcobendas, Madrid, del 25/09/2009 al 26/09/2009
En estas jornadas nos acercaremos a la contribución de los astrónomos no profesionales al avance de la astronomía.

Anuncio del Congreso colaboración Pro-Am en Córdoba

El 20, 21 y 22 de noviembre de 2009 se celebra en Córdoba un congreso sobre colaboración Profesional-Amateur en investigación astronómica :

http://www.iac.es/congreso/proam/

Two new asteroid designations

The night of August the 22nd I was trying to recover the asteroid K01QS8G, it is interesting because from a dynamical point of view it could be taken for a comet and it was not observed since its discovery back in 2001.
The object was there, some arc minutes off the nominal position, with the predicted magnitude, speed and direction.
In the same field another, non catalogued, object was also moving. I reported the K01QS8G observations to the mpc and kept the unided object to try and get a second night on the 23th.
You wont usually get discovery rigths unless you observe the body on two different nights.
The next night I pointed the telescope to the position where it was supposed to be and found it close to the ephemerides, to my surprise another object was moving over there.
Because it was moving at a similar speed and direction, I thought it could well be present on the same images from the night before, I prepared backward ephemerides for the new object, re-stacked the images and luckily enough it was there, then I reported booth.
The mpc, very soon, assigned new designations:

LC00190=K09Q09X
LC00191=K09Q09W

These make discovery numbers 125 and 126 in the observatory's account.

202819 = “Carlos Sánchez Magro”,

El día 6 de agosto de 2009 el MPC ha asignado nombre Carlosanchez al asteroide 202819 descubierto desde La Cañada.

Carlos Sánchez Magro (Valladolid 1944- Tenerife 1985) fue un astrofísico español, miembro distinguido del Instituto Astrofísico de Canarias (IAC), pionero de la astronomía infrarroja y hábil desarrollador de instrumentación astronómica, incluyendo el telecopio infrarrojo del Observatorio del Teide e instrumentos para naves espaciales.

Discovered 2008 September 26 by J. Lacruz at La Cañada.Carlos Sánchez Magro (1944-1985). Spanish astrophysicist, distinguished member of the Instituto Astronómico de Canarias IAC, infrared astronomy pioneer and skilled developer of new astronomical instrumentation, including IR Telescope at Teide Observatory and spaceborne instruments.

Consultar los datos orbitales en el jpl
El telescopio Carlos Sánchez TCS en el observatorio del Teide.

NEOCP 98LA264 --> 2009 QB23, non interesting!

I was trying to confirm this object found by the OAM J75 observatory La Sagra from the NEOCP on the night of August the 2nd in a very good night with low seeing, probably due to the uncertainty in the preliminary ephemerides available on-line from the mpc the stacked images showed a slightly diffuse object. However it resulted to be purely asteroidal, the lesson learned is that a lot of care should be taken when trying to find cometary activity by stacking frames on the movement of an object with an orbit not well known yet.