New Comet C/2009 G1 (STEREO)

[martinastro]

Just after hearing about this on cometsml. A new comet discovered by STEREO. It's in the morning sky around mag +10.5. Fuutre uncertain yet so waiting for more info.

Roman has mentioned this in another post but I think it requires a thread of it's own 

[martinastro]

Copied from Roman's post...

Today (Apr.10, 2009) a new discovery was announced - C/2009 G1 (STEREO).
The discovery features are quite interesting - this comet is one of few SOHO/STEREO comets which could be observable from the ground.

Now the comet itself isn't a very interesting object - it is relatively bright (faint) - ca. 10.5mag, situated in Aquarius, low in the morning sky.
It is predicted to reach max 10.2m in mid-May (perihelion on Apr.12 or 15 (?)), but it will rapidly move southwards in May and never return north, so April is the only possible time to observe this comet.


Quote
STEREO's 20th comet has been discovered... and it's a pretty exciting one! Comet C/2009 G1 (STEREO), also known as STEREO-20, was announced earlier today on MPEC 2009-G30. Discovered yesterday by Chinese amateur astronomer Jiangao Ruan, it is a small but relatively bright (~mag 10-11) comet that, unlike most of SOHO and STEREO's comet discoveries, does not belong to any known population or group of objects. This in itself makes it an interesting target, but the most exciting part of this discovery is that it is very likely to be visible from Earth to observers with relatively small telescopes! This may not seem like a particularly big deal, but of the more than 1,600 comets discovered by SOHO, only a very small number have ever been seen from the ground (perhaps most notably C/1998 J1 (SOHO)), and none of STEREO's other nineteen discoveries have been ground-observable at all.

(source)