New Visual Amateur Comet Discovery! - 2010 V1 Ikeya-Murakami

New comet C/2010 V1 Ikeya-Murakami is now exhibiting significant evolution within its coma over just a span of several days. At discovery, and for several nights after, the coma had been described as either circular or slightly elliptical in shape by visual observers and supported by CCD imagery. Now the coma has completely transformed into well defined bullet shape with a parabolic hood appearance on the leading (SE) edge of the comet which looks uncannily like a smaller version of comet 17P/Holmes which graced our skies back in the Winter of 2007. Latest CCD images clearly show a well defined coma which now also sports a bright tail (possibly of dust) pointing several arc min's directly away from the Sun.

The coma is not the only similarity with comet 17P/Holmes, experts now believe that Ikeya-Murakami is currently experiencing a bright outburst which explains why the comet was discovered at such a bright magnitude. The comet had approached the Sun at a low elongation, reached perihelion during October when it was still unknown to the world, then experienced a significant outburst post-perihelion possibly due to fresh areas on the surface being exposed to the Sun via the comet's rotation and changing geometry in relation to the Sun. These eruptions of gas and dust form features called jets which introduce new concentrations into the coma (atmosphere around the nucleus) and tail - caused by pressure from the solar wind blowing dust particles 'down wind'. This is what is happening at the moment so Ikeya-Murakami is fast becoming a dynamic and interesting comet in it's own rite. How long will the outburst last?, will the coma and tail continue to change shape? - no one knows the answer to these questions yet so the motivation for comet hunters to set their alarm clocks is more than strong.

There is some confusion over the comet's brightness, magnitude estimates now range from +8.0 to 9.0 however this figure will vary depending on sky conditions, atmospheric extinction, and aperture effect. Large binoculars should be used for accurate visual photometry however coma and tail details will require a decent telescope, in fact I recommend the latter if you want to find the comet at all. 2010 V1 should gradually fade so observers should be encouraged to hunt the comet down as soon as possible before the the Earth-Sun-comet geometry becomes less favourable.

C/2010 V1 Ikeya-Murakami is currently visible in the eastern sky before dawn near the morning twilight arch some 32 degrees elongation from the Sun in the constellation of Virgo and can be found within the vicinity of naked eye star Porimma and planet Saturn - both of which serve as excellent guide posts to the comet. From Nov 9th to 10th the comet passes within a degree or so south of Saturn, it's moving slowly SE each night while getting lower in the sky and by mid month it enters the vacant star fields of eastern Virgo above brilliant planet Venus. Here's the RA and DEC figures from November to January available on this BAA Ephemeris...

http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/~jds/10v1.uk (UK)

http://scully.cfa.harvard.edu/~cgi/ReturnPrepEph?d=c&o=CK10V010 (World - from MPC)

C/2010 V1 Ikeya-Murakami was visually discovered by the famous comet hunters Kaoru Ikeya and Shigeki Murakami, both of these dedicated individuals have been hunting for new comets for decades. Kaoru Ikeya is of course most famous for discovering 153P/ Ikeya-Zhang (sketch) and the great sungrazing cometIkeya-Seki.

Ephemerides , Finder Chart

Make sure to check out the 'Sky Events' page as I regularly feature one or more of the current comets in more detail with images, sketches, and visual reports from myself and other readers.

A special thanks goes to Gregory from skyhound for the use of his excellent comet finder charts! and to Seiichi Yoshida for his regular updates. Happy comet observing.

Martin McKenna

Observing Adventures With Great Comet Mc Naught

C/2006 P1 Mc Naught Gallery

Other Comet Observing / Hunting Links

Chasing Tails - The 1000 Hour Journey

An Observing Guide To Comets

Visual Comet Hunting

Comet Hunting - Avoiding the Surveys

List Of Comets Observed

My Comet Hunting Statistics

Comet Sketches

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