Amateur astronomers keeping an eye on the comet

This post is an interview with Padma A. Yanamandra-Fisher, a Senior Research Scientist at the Space Science Institute, USA, and the Rosetta Coordinator of Amateur Observations for 67P/C-G. Q: When did the amateur campaign to observe Rosetta's comet start? A: The first observations of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko by amateur astronomers for this stretch of the comet's orbit, leading to the 2015 perihelion, were performed in March 2014. At the time, the comet was very faint and only visible from the southern hemisphere, with a magnitude around 20, just at the limit of detection by small telescopes. In addition, the comet was in a highly dense star field and not always easy to image. From March to November 2014, we received about a dozen or so decent images from amateurs located at various locations such as Australia, South America, the USA and some parts of Europe. We compiled these early amateur images of the comet in a short video produced by Carolyn Collins Petersen. Then, from the end of 2014 to April 2015, the comet was too close to the Sun on the sky to be observed from Earth. On 13 April, amateur astronomers Jean-Francois Soulier, Jean-Gabriel Bosch and Alain Maury recovered the comet using (remotely) the Space Observatory in Chile, at a magnitude of 16.8. This detection kicked off the worldwide campaign to observe 67P/C-G in 2015. Q: How many members joined the campaign so far and where are they based? A: So far, about 250 amateur astronomers have signed up to join the campaign. They are based all over the world, from Europe to South America, from Australia to India, from South Africa to the Caribbean. However, as the comet is very low above the horizon at northern latitudes, it was predominantly observed with telescopes in the southern hemisphere until […]

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