[BAA Comets] C/2014 A4 (SONEAR) / Comet searching from the UK

[Richard Miles]

First my congratulations to Cristóvão Jacques and his colleagues, Eduardo 
Pimentel, and João Ribeiro de Barros on their comet discovery: one of only a 
few to have been made from Brazil. It is always useful for other comet 
hunters to read of successful exploits such as this first amateur discovery 
of 2014.

I well remember getting to know Cristóvão Jacques at the Meeting on 
Asteroids and Comets in Europe (MACE 2006) held in Vienna that year 
http://www.astrometrica.at/MACE/ . I could see that it would be only a 
matter of time before discoveries would be coming his way. He and his 
colleagues have worked hard in setting up their observatory so it is fitting 
that they have been rewarded with their first success.

I should add that my own comet survey came to an abrupt halt last August 
when my mount failed. Up until that point I had completed 53 searches: the 
first one was completed on 2011 January 28. Weather is the main limitation 
in the UK. The survey I conducted was restricted to solar elongations in the 
range, 35-60 degrees in the evening sky where there are very few asteroids 
to be seen. Peter Birtwhistle also attended the MACE 2006 (we being the only 
representatives from the UK despite English being the official language of 
the meeting!). On the plane back, he and I discussed comet searching from 
the UK and concluded that our best chances of success are to plumb areas low 
in the northern sky during the summer months of May-August. So if there's 
anyone contemplating this, do have a go and keep us all posted on your 
progress.

During my survey from Dorset (comprising ~105 hr of imaging, 4,300 frames 
covering a total searched area of about 11,400 sq.deg. down to 15th mag 
incl.) I came across 4 different comets, all of which were already known. 
These were:

C/2009 P1 on 2011 Nov 6
78P on 2012 Mar 25
C/2011 UF305 on 2012 Jul 20, and on 2012 July 28 (different field)
C/2012 J1 on 2013 Mar 02
plus the Chandra X-ray Observatory on 2012 Jul 20

Please someone, do feel free to participate in searching for comets from the 
UK. It's good fun and a change from the usual observing routine.

Martin Mobberley's book, "Hunting and Imaging Comets" is well worth 
devouring up front of any attempt to discover a comet. See:
http://www.springer.com/astronomy/astronomy,+observations+and+techniques/book/978-1-4419-6904-0


Cheers,
Richard Miles


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "denis buczynski" <buczynski8166 at btinternet.com>
To: "BAA Comets discussion list" <comets-disc at britastro.org>
Sent: Friday, January 17, 2014 12:34 PM
Subject: [BAA Comets] Fw: [comets-ml] RE: C/2014 A4 (SONEAR)


Hello all,

A new comet discovery by an amateur team has been announced with the 
discovery of C/2014 A4 SONEAR. 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 Dorset 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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

If someone else wants more detail, you can drop me an email.

Cristovao
Y00 - SONEAR
Oliveira - Brasil

Image and follow up confirmation from the Italian team is detailed below.

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:

Vicente Ferreira de Assis Neto & Giovanni Sostero.

Ciao,
Ernesto Guido, Nick Howes & Martino Nicolini
http://remanzacco.blogspot.com
http://twitter.com/comets77