Comet Section        

August 5, 2020 – ALPO Comet News for August 2020

C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) was the celestial highlight of July and likely the best comet of 2020. NEOWISE is now rapidly fading but still a visually and photographically impressive object well placed for observation in the evening sky. August will see it fade from around 6^th to 9^th magnitude. By the end of August, short-period comet 88P/Howell will challenge NEOWISE’s place as the “brightest comet in the sky”. 2P/Encke, C/2017 T2 (PANSTARRS), and C/2019 U6 (Lemmon) start the month around 9-10^th magnitude but fade throughout the month.

The monthly ALPO Comet News PDF can be found here. Note with all of the recent comet activity, this report is a bit large in size. A shorter version of this report is posted on a dedicated Cloudy Nights forum (https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/721655-alpo-comet-news-for-august-2020/). All are encouraged to join the discussion over at Cloudy Nights.

- Carl Hergenrother