Powell Gammill
Letters to the Editor • Space Travel and Exploration
Video of Terry Bressi's (CheckpointUSA) comet
Thought Ernie might be interested in this if he hadn't heard of it yet.
"Comet Bressi was first spotted by Spacewatch observer Terry Bressi from Kitt Peak on October 14, 2012. If any of the comets in this blog post are likely to not survive perihelion, this is the one.
The comet is currently just within 1 AU of the Sun and little over 1 AU from Earth. Even after a recent outburst a week or two ago the comet is still rather faint. My observations place it at V magnitude 13.0 but this is most likely an underestimate as the observations were hampered by a very right Moon nearby and the comet’s low elevation. Visual observers place it closer to magnitude 11-12.
Comet Bressi will reach perihelion on February 24 at a distance of 0.32 AU from the Sun. It will be interesting to see if it survives. If it does it may brighten enough to be seen in small telescopes though observations will be limited to southern observers until March.
Recent observations place the comet at magnitude 10.5. If it can hold together till perihelion it should can brighten up to 8th-9th magnitude. Northern observers will only be able to follow the comet till around mid-month. After that it will solely be a southern object till next month." -from http://transientsky.wordpress.com
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1 Comments in Response to Video of Terry Bressi's (CheckpointUSA) comet
AU is Astronomical Unit. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_unit, "An astronomical unit (abbreviated as AU, au, a.u., or ua) is a unit of length now defined as 149,597,870,700 metres (92,955,807.273 mi) exactly,[1] or roughly the mean Earth–Sun distance."
Magnitude from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnitude_(astronomy), "Magnitude is the logarithmic measure of the brightness of an object, in astronomy, measured in a specific wavelength or passband, usually in optical or near-infrared wavelengths."