Comet C/2007 N3 Lulin became a fine Spring comet in February and March for UK observers. At around magnitude 6, perhaps a touch brighter, Lulin is not a true naked eye comet, but it is large and bright in any telescope or binoculars. Following solar conjunction at the end of 2008, Lulin has raced from Scorpio, through Libra, Virgo and then into Leo, skirting just south of Saturn around 23rd/24th February. Its orbit is very close to the ecliptic, which is why it has traced its path through the...
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At the start of the year, Comet 144P Kushida had just glided eastwards from Aries into Taurus. At magnitude 10.7 and no discernible tail, it glows eerily to the north west of the mag 7.4 star GSC 1234-545, which by comparisonshines brightly towards the bottom of the picture.



This picture 'freezes' the motion of the comet against the background stars by using some image processing trickery. First of all I used AstroArt to stack the images in AstroArt so as to correlate the stars, which results ...
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Discovered in 1994, Comet 144P/Kushida orbits the Sun every 7.6 years and is approaching its next perihelion on 26th January 2009 when it will be close to the Hyades in Taurus. This sequence, taken on 26th December 2008, shows the comet having just left Aries, moving into Taurus. Each frame is a 120s exposure, separated by 8 minutes.




144P/Kushida in Taurus. 10 120s exposures, 8 minutes separation
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On 23rd December the asteroid 2008 EV5 passed within 8.4 lunar distances of the earth. Its size (thought to be around 400m based on radar observations) and its orbit has led to it being designated a potentially hazardous object by the Minor Planet Centre (MPC).

Unfortunately 23rd December was cloudy in my location so I had to wait. When a clear night presented itself on Boxing Day, there was a problem with my ephemeris predicition and I missed my target! Finally, using emphemeris from the JPL ...

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During the Autumn there have been numerous modest comets traversing the skies (see the Comet Chasing website for a list of current comets). Two particularly well-placed comets for northern hemisphere observers have been C/2006 W3 (Christensen) and C/2006 OF2 (Broughton), the first and second images below.




Christensen, at magnitude 9.9, could be found moving quite rapidly across Cepheus during late November when this picture was taken and exhibited a 1' coma. Slightly larger with a 2' coma, Br...
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Here is a short sequence showing 9 Metis nudging northwards across the southerly regions of Aries last night, the 17th December 2008. There are 3 frames in the sequence, 10 minutes apart, each frame comprising a 60 second exposure. The motion isn't spectacular - I worked out that its motion would be about 2' in 10 hours, so you may struggle to detect 4-5" of drift in the elapsed 20 minutes of this sequence.

9 Metis (the '9' denoting that Metis was the 9th asteroid discovered) is 366km along ...

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