The Great Christmas Comet of 2011, 2011 W3 (Lovejoy) Options

[Guest_Sunspot_*]

http://sungrazer.nrl.navy.mil/index.php?p=.../birthday_comet

Possible very bright sungrazing comet coming mid December - Comet Lovejoy C/2011 W3 (Lovejoy)

Information in the link above.

[Mongo]

From comet-ml post #19088 by Robert McNaught:

On Sun, 25 Dec 2011, [iso-8859-2] Jakub Èerný wrote:

> Actually I do not think that nucleus has dissipated. Activity just fade
> quickly, but apparently there is still something huge producing much more
> material into tail and coma, unlikely swarm of debries.

Thanks Jakub,

I tend to agree that there is an "invisible" mass responsible for the hood and spine. The tail is showing no signs of becoming a ghost. I've put up a processed Uppsala image from last night (Dec 24.7UT).

http://msowww.anu.edu.au/~rmn/C2011W3.htm

It continues to show a well defined parabolic hood and the spine narrowing basically to an "empty" point pretty much on the edge of the parabola. Trying to image it now, but there is cloud and I can't get a focus sequence.

My astrometry of the tip-of-the-spine will perhaps tell one way or another whether this is a substantial mass or displaying significant short-term non-gravitional effects. Give it a week and we should a good handle on the dynamics.

The tail continues to fade (Dec 25.7UT) and is very significantly less bright than on Dec 21. There was quite a similarity to Hyakutake tonight, partly due to the tail being so long, narrow and "ghostly". There is no real comparison though, as there is no coma and condensation, which were both prominent in Hyakutake. On Dec 21 though, the tail surface brightness was sufficient to put it in the "awesome" category for me. Very much on par with Hyakutake, Hale-Bopp and Bennett. Tonight it was much more Halleyesque. I'll reply to the great comet listing thread in a day or so as I've been keeping such a list (and noting other folks lists) for a couple of decades.