October 7, 2020 – ALPO Comet News for October 2020
Two comets are expected to be good targets for small aperture observers: fading 88P/Howell (8th to 9th magnitude) and brightening C/2020 M3 (ATLAS) (9th to 8th magnitude). C/2020 P1 (NEOWISE), not to be confused with this year’s brightest comet C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE), could brighten above 10th magnitude but will only be visible to southern hemisphere observers at low elevations during the first week of the month. Assuming it survives perihelion, which may be unlikely as the comet is intrinsically faint and dynamically new, C/2020 P1 could be visible to northern observers as a faint visual object during the last week of the month. Among fainter comets to watch (10-12th mag) are departing comets C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) and C/2020 Q1 (Borisov) and inbound comet C/2020 S3 (Erasmus).
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/733309-alpo-comet-news-for-october-2020/). All are encouraged to join the discussion over at Cloudy Nights.
- Carl Hergenrother
