Reports from Geisei Observatory <January 17, 2005>

• C/2004 Q2 (Machholz) and C/2005 A1 (LINEAR)
Comet Machholz (C/2004 Q2) is easily visible to the naked eye but its brightness has diminished further. A 3-minute exposure by the 60cm reflector does not show the tails clearly. It only appears as a bright disk.
C/2005 A1 is unexpectedly bright and, if I have a good look by the 20cm refractor at 60x, my experienced comet hunter's eye can confirm its presence. It is approximately 12.1 magnitude and the coma is about 2' across. There is no doubt that I saw the comet, since the photograph shows the comet at the position where I saw it in the telescopic field of view.
I believe nobody has discovered such a faint comet visually recently. However, the American observer Swift seems to have found very faint comets. I saw Comet Pajdusakova by a 15cm reflector at 24x in December 1953, but it looked a little brighter and larger than C/2005 A1.
Comet Hunter Seki's eye is still quite capable!

    CK04Q020   2005 01 17.62674 03 14 29.69 +42 46 20.8           4.7 T      372
    CK04Q020   2005 01 17.63316 03 14 28.82 +42 47 01.4                      372

    CK05A010   2005 01 17.80313 13 56 16.15 -20 28 05.1          14.2 T      372
    CK05A010   2005 01 17.80694 13 56 16.42 -20 28 16.2                      372
    CK05A010   2005 01 17.81181 13 56 16.73 -20 28 29.8          14.1 T      372