2021f1 20220128 ahale

After A/2021 F1 emerged into the morning sky a couple of months ago, Hidetaka Sato reported that it appeared cometary. I took some LCO images on an occasional basis after that, but to me these were inconclusive as to its nature, although it was clearly brighter than the ephemeris predictions. However, I took a pair of images via LCO-Haleakala this morning, and it now very obviously a comet — and moderately bright, too. 

I’m attaching one of the images. Taken at 15:50 UT January 28 from LCO-Haleakala, 0.4-meter telescope, 5-minute exposure, PanSTARRS-w filter (which is close to “clear”); standard orientation (north up, east to right), approximate size of image 16x12 arcminutes. No processing other than cropping.