2022jk5 20230821 ahale

Yesterday I took some images of this comet with the 0.35-m LCO telescope at SAAO. I’ve attached one, unprocessed, uncropped, roughly 15x15 arcminutes. The comet is rather prominent on the images, which led me to attempt a visual observation last night. I successfully detected it, although it’s fainter than what the LCO images seemed to suggest:

August 21.27 UT, m1 = 13.2, 1.4’ coma, DC ~3 (41 cm reflector, 70x)

I don’t know if this is an outburst or not. It’s much brighter than what it was at perihelion passage almost four months ago; on the other hand, it is presently at its closest approach to Earth, and will be at opposition next month.