Home=Current Comets: 144P (2023/24)
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Comet 144P/Kushida (P=7.50a) will pass perihelion at a solar distance of 1.40 AU on Jan. 25, 2024, and will approach Earth to within 0.57 AU on Dec. 12, 2023. It should peak at 9-10 mag during December and January. The comet should be brighter than 16 mag between August 2023 and June 2024. During this period it will move through the constellations Aries, Taurus (perihelion), Gemini, Cancer and Leo. From Central European locations it will be visible in the morning sky at the beginning of the apparition, be visible all night in October/November and disappear above the western evening horizon in May 2024.
As in previous perihelion passes the comet once again showed both an extremely high activity factor before perihelion and an extremely different development pre- and post-perihelion. Based on 239 observations from 50 observers the comet peaked at 9.6 mag around Jan. 25, 2024. The mentioned differences in the brightness development pre- and post-perihelion are clearly demonstrated by the following parameters:
pre-perihelion: m0 = -4.5 mag / n = 43Thus the comet brightened from 16.5 mag to 10.5 mag within only 7 weeks, while post-perihelion it needed 15 weeks to fade from 9.5 mag to 12.5 mag (whereby the steadily increasing distance to Earth even added to the decrease in brightness post-perihelion).
Total Brightness and Coma DiameterThe coma diameter measured just less than 1' (25,000 km) at the start of the apparition, thereafter increasing rapidly, reaching a diameter of 7' (250,000 km) by the end of January / beginning of February 2024. By the end of April it had shrunk to 2' (130,000 km). The coma was always very diffuse. The degree of condensation was estimated at DC 2-3 (DC 3-4 only around perihelion). A tail was not observed.
Andreas Kammerer