Hi list,

IAUC 8871 and 8872 officially announce and confirm the identity of the SOHO
comet found by Bo Zhou on Sep. 10, 2007, with comets 1999 R1 and 2003 R5, as
predicted by Sebastian F. Hönig in 2005, and published in Astronomy and
Astrophysics <b>445</b>, 759 (2006). The linked orbit by B. G. Marsden,
based on only the C2 observations (with re-measured positions of the 1999,
and 2003 apparitions) indicate a perihelion date of Sep. 11.32, compared to
the prediction by H&ouml;nig of Sep. 11.26, which was thus only about 1.5
hours too early! M. Knight (University of Maryland), who has analysed the
brightness behaviour of this comet in all three apparitions remarks that the
lightcurves are more typical for a comet with several brightness peaks. The
evolution at all three apparitions is remarkably similar. It should also be
noted that the comet has not yet been detected in STEREO imagery, which is
typical for comets, where only bright ones are seen while minor planets can
be detected to a much fainter magnitude. The comet will most likely be
numbered 192P and the overall count of SOHO comets will be reduced by one.

Again congratulations to Sebastian!

Cheers, Maik
--
If they give you ruled paper, write the other way. * Juan Ramon Jimenez
________________________________________________________________________
maik@... http://www.comethunter.de
German Comet Section http://www.fg-kometen.de
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/comets-ml