Here's a bright, fast moving MP that would be visible on Dec 19-20 except for interference from the bright moon.
It's predicted to reach 16.2 mag between 1400 EST on Dec 19 to 1400 EST on Dec 20 in Cancer. The path is shown here: 
[attachment=2154]

It will pass close to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko & M44.

Phil S.

Although with nasty moon interference, 25°-35° away, we have a close pass of a possibly 15th magnitude (maybe 14.3) bus sized rock from space. Minimum pass distance (0.00138AU, .54LD, 207,352Km) occurs for me between midnight and 3am CST Dec. 16th. If it were bright enough for me, it would be interesting to watch it scream towards the horizon in Eridanus at a max speed of 10.3'/min! Passing less than one arc minute from both HIP 17107 (mag 7) and HIP 16535 (mag 9), 01:03:40 & 01:20:25 respectively. Between midnight until 2am, it covers near 11°. One more cool miss out of reach of my 13".

Starting at the Comet Database window, trying to search for C/2021 A1 Leonard.

In the Designation window, I have tried entering full designation (C/2021 A1 Leonard), along with C/2021 A1 and get no match. If I enter Leonard only then I get a match, but of course not the correct comet.

If I enter A1 in the Find Num I get no match either.

So, what is the secret?

Thanks
Bob

NASA’s new ‘Eyes on Asteroids’ Reveals Our Near-Earth Object Neighborhood.
Cool tool to play with.


https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-eyes...ighborhood

The Apollo class NEA 2021 XM3 is predicted to reach 16.8 mag tonight around midnight EST. Predicted motion is 1'/min - pretty fast. An IA chart is attached with the Object Info (OI) dialog included: [attachment=2139]

This one is just beyond the reach of my 13" scope, maybe someone else will have better luck.

Phil S.

Sentry-II has a tool that can rapidly calculate impact probabilities for all known NEAs.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-next...oes-online

I just ran across this.

The ESA SSA-NEO Coordination Centre has released the December newsletter summarizing the most relevant data and events on asteroids and comets approaching the orbit of the Earth.

https://neo.ssa.esa.int/-/latest-newsletter

This comet is predicted to reach naked eye visibility in the next few weeks. Here's the OI from ST4V: [attachment=2128]

Good hunting,

Phil S.

The MP 2021 WK1 is predicted to reach 16.4 magnitude on the evening of 2021 Nov 30 ~2200 EST in Auriga. The predicted motion is 79"/min.

Here's the path predicted by ST4 Visual: [attachment=2127]

The osculating elements were downloaded from the MPC today. The epoch of osculation is 2021 Nov 28. The Condition Code is 7 according to JPL's website, so not too bad.

As always, good hunting,

Phil S.

How do I merge two or more Observing Lists into a single Observing List?

Thanks,

Gene