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January 2012

January 29, 2012
    The Geisei Observatory team has recovered P/2003 HT15, a periodic comet returning for the first time. This is the first recovery of a periodic comet at Geisei Observtory in 18 years since the recovery of Comet Brooks 2 on May 6, 1994. This success owes a lot to Mr. Shigeo Shimomoto and Mr. Hirohisa Sato of the team. For this recovery, Mr. Shimomto made 14 10-minute exposures using our new 70cm reflector. Mr. Sato calculated the cometfs orbit based on Mr. Shimomotofs observations and reported it to the Smithsonian.
    Observatory telescopes have become large around the world, which has made it difficult for medium-size telescopes such as 70cm telescopes to make discoveries of faint objects. Their gamateur spirith, which makes up for whatever deficiencies the telescope has, led to this success.


Recovery image of P/2003 HT15 (LINEAR)
Composite of 14 10-minute exposures
21:02 - 23:13, January 26, 2012
70cm f/7 reflector + CCD
Copyright 2012 Geisei Observatory

Copyright (C) 2012 Tsutomu Seki.