[BAA Comets] Fw: [comets-ml] RE: C/2014 A4 (SONEAR)

[denis buczynski]

Hello all, 

  A new comet discovery by an amateur team has been announced with the discovery of C/2014 A4 SONAR. This (faint) comet discovery is the first by an a amateur (or amateur team) for 2014. The discovery account is contained in the forwarded email below. The prospects for comet discoveries by amateurs using ccd search techniques is becoming ever more realistic after the discoveries last year by the Russian teams and now one by the Brazilian team at SONEAR. Let us hope that the regular ccd comet search by Richard Miles in Devon will encourage more search programmes by amateurs in the UK.

Denis Buczynski
BAA Comet Section



----- Forwarded Message -----
>From: "cjacqueslf at yahoo.com.br" <cjacqueslf at yahoo.com.br>
>To: comets-ml at yahoogroups.com 
>Sent: Friday, January 17, 2014 3:56 AM
>Subject: [comets-ml] RE: C/2014 A4 (SONEAR)
> 
>
>
>  
>Hello again;
>
>
>The Southern Observatory for Near Earth Asteroids Research (SONEAR) is located in Oliveira, a city 120 km from Belo Horizonte, that is the third largest in Brazil. The sky is pretty good, although we have a 1200mm annual rainfall. 
>
>
>We begun our operations in July, 2013 with a 12" Schmidt Cassegrain, got the Y00 code and in late October  our main instrument was ready to begin operation and adjustments. Now we use a 18" f/2.9 telescope reflector completely made in Brazil. The mount is a Paramount MEII with  a FLI microline 16803 CCD. This system yields a 1,64 x 1,64 degree field, plate scale of 1,44 "/pixel, with 8 seconds downloads.
>
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>Our observatory is a Roll Off 6 x 4 meters. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVJPlM8TG5E and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0RSOJNfVN8
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>You can see a picture of our telescope here: http://www.observatorio- phoenix.org/t_proj/Sonear/ sonear.htm . I am still not satisfied with the telescope performance because we are struggling with collimation and other small issues.
>
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>For detection, we use a Paulo Holvorcem´s software called Skysift. We are now tuning the parameters, so we can better detect objects. If someone is interested in this software you can contact him at holvorcem at mpc.com.br. For planning the night we use other Holvorcem´s software called TAO . http://sites.mpc.com.br/holvorcem/tao/readme.html . For telescope and CCD control we use ACP and Maxim.
>
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>December and January are the rainy season months in Brazil, but this year has been atypical, so we had 12 clear nights in a row. The C/2014 A4 was discovered on the night of January 12th, as were surveying the region between R.A 5 and 6 hours, and declination -40 and -50. As the beginning of the survey was centralized in dec -40, half of the field was above this declination, so we spotted the object in declination -39.6 in a matter of lucky. Since December 18th, we are sending the Sky Coverage  report to MPC. http://www.minorplanetcenter.net/iau/SkyCoverage.html
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>I analysed the images 12 hours after the end of the night. The object apparently was asteroidal. On the next day, Ernesto Guido emailed me saying that he imaged the object in Australia and it was a little bit elongated. One day more, he confirmed the comet nature using Faulkes South. So this is summarize our  discovery. 
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>If someone else wants more detail, you can drop me an email.
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>
>Cristovao
>Y00 - SONEAR
>Oliveira - Brasil
>
>
>Image and follow up confirmation from the Italian team is detailed below.
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> 
>Hi All
>
>Blog updated with our confirmation image & info of newly discovered
>comet C/2014 A4 (SONEAR):
>
>http://bit.ly/1kDwPiU
>
>Big congratulations to our friends Cristovao, Eduardo & Joao Ribeiro
>for this great discovery!!
>
>Thanks also to the discoverers for their dedication of this new comet
>to two great comet observers that are not among us anymore:
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>Vicente Ferreira de Assis Neto & Giovanni Sostero.
>
>Ciao,
>Ernesto Guido, Nick Howes & Martino Nicolini
>http://remanzacco.blogspot.com
>http://twitter.com/comets77
> 
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