Jim Scotti's Comet page

The following lists are in pdf format.

244P/2000 Y3

  • 244P/2000 Y3 (Scotti) This is the first discovery image of my very first comet "Scotti" (all the other earlier "discoveries" turned out to be of known objects....). Here is a 2nd image (note the shift against the crowded starfield). Here is a 3rd image.


  • Comet Observations

    Images with the Spacewatch telescope and CCD

    As a team member with the Spacewatch survey for Near Earth Asteroids (NEA's) and other populations of solar system objects, I observe on Kitt Peak in Arizona typically for 8 nights each lunation. I am able to use some of my observing time to observe some of the many available comets within the range of our 36 inch telescope or 1.8-m telescope and CCD camera. The following images are just some of the comet images I've obtained or helped obtain over the years

    C/2011 U2 (Bressi) (Images)

    P/2011 A2 (Scotti) (Images)

    C/2010 F3 (Scotti) (Images)

    C/2010 E5 (Scotti) (Images)

    P/2010 C1 (Scotti 4) (Images)

    2P/Encke (Images)

    19P/Borrelly (Images)

    62P/Tsuchinshan 1 (Images)

    88P/Howell (Images)

    119P/Parker-Hartley (Images)

    128P/Shoemaker-Holt 1 (Images)

    131P/Mueller 2 (Images)

    132P/Helin-Roman-Alu 2 (Images)

    133P/Elst-Pizarro (Images)

    134P/Kowal-Vavrova (Images)

    139P/Vaisala-Oterma (Images)

    C/1995 O1 (Hale-Bopp) (Images)

    C/1996 P2 (Russell-Watson) (Images)

    C/1997 BA6 (Spacewatch) (Images)

    270P/1997 C1 (Gehrels) (Images)

    200P/1997 V1 (Larsen) (Images)

    C/1998 QP54 (LONEOS-Tucker) (Images)

    188P/1998 S1 (LINEAR-Mueller) (Images)

    C/1999 D1 (LONEOS) (Images)

    244P/2000 Y3 (Scotti) (Images)



    Photographic comet images


    Comet Hyakutake over Mission San Xavier del Bac

    This image was obtained as the moon set in the west on the night that comet Hyakutake was closest to the north pole. The yellow cast on the usually white Mission is due to local lighting.
     



    Comet artwork


    Sonoran Hyakutake

    This painting was made more than a month before comet Hyakutake would have reached the position on the sky depicted in this painting. I was a bit optomistic about just how the comet was to appear as it set into the twilight sky in the west behind Mission San Xavier del Bac near Tucson in Arizona. Unfortunately, the comet was not quite this spectacular as it sort of "fizzled" as it moved inside of Earth's orbit. 

    Beacons

    This painting is of a bright comet in the twilight sky behind a lighthouse on the ocean shore. In particular the lighthouse is the Heceta Head lighthouse on the Oregon coast, USA. 
    For more paintings (including other comet artwork), visit my (Mostly) Space Art web page.

    Some comet links:

    IAU/CBAT/MPC Elements & Ephemerides of Observable Comets
    International Comet Quarterly
    ICQ: Recent Comet Brightness Estimates
    Comet Section of Germany (English versin)
    Charles Morris' Comet Home Page at JPL (broken link - this link is to the Wayback Machine, last version)
    Carl Hergenrother's comet page
    Carl Hergenrother's Transient Sky blog
    Seiichi Yoshida's Comet home page
    Seiichi Yoshida's list of Comets Waiting for First Observation
    Don Machholz's thecomethunter.com page
    The Puckett Observatory comet page
    Gary Kronk's Cometography webpage
    Comet Orbit Home Page
    BAA Comet section (Jon Shanklin)
    Arkansas Skies Observatory Page
    Comet Section of Germany
    Light curves for Comets (Artyom Novichonok)
    International visual observation of Comets

    The background image is comet P/Shoemaker-Levy 9 as it appeared on 1993 March 30, a few days after discovery. This image was obtained with the Spacewatch telescope and shows all the major structures that were seen in this comet.

    Last update: November 21, 2013