2024pn7 202411101 ahale

 

The discovery (by Pan-STARRS) of this object traveling in an orbit of an intermediate-period comet was announced on MPEC 2024-Q29 (https://www.minorplanetcenter.net/mpec/K24/K24Q29.html). I took a couple of sets of images via LCO (0.35-m telescopes) during August, which showed its appearance as completely stellar. I didn’t take any further images until just a couple of days ago, and these showed it as being possibly cometary, although follow-up images I took a day later were somewhat more ambiguous as to its nature. Fortunately, I was able to obtain a set of images earlier today (November 1.82 UT) with one of the 1.0-meter telescopes at LCO-Tenerife (Z24), and these show the object as being clearly cometary. I’m attaching one of these images (300-second exposure, field dimensions 5x5 arcminutes); I’ve increased the contrast slightly from the original image.

 

2024 PN7 passes through perihelion (q = 1.525 AU) in early December. It’s presently in the evening sky near an elongation of 76 degrees, and it gets lower du