------------------------------------------------------------------- THE ASTRONOMER Electronic Circular No 2185 2005 Dec 31 15.28UT Ed:Guy M Hurst, 16,Westminster Close, Kempshott Rise, Basingstoke, Hants, RG22 4PP,England.Telephone/FAX(01256)471074Int:+441256471074 INTERNET: GUY@TAHQ.DEMON.CO.UK Backup: gmh@wdcc1.bnsc.rl.ac.uk WORLD WIDE WEB http://www.theastronomer.org ------------------------------------------------------------------- COMET 73P/SCHWASSMANN-WACHMANN 3 Mark Kidger has e-mailed that Ramon Naves contacted him late on December 30 believing he had recovered fragment "b" of 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3. He and his wife, Montse Campās had been looking at a long sequence of frames that they had taken starting at 02:07UT on 2005 Dec. 20 and noticed something faint that appeared to track the comet. Ramon had 90 x 1-minute exposures with the 0.305-m S/C. Stacking them into three frames, each summing 30 individual images (30 minutes exposure) it was evident that something was leading the comet in its orbit. Mark checked the ephemeris for the other fragments ("b" and "e") and found that they are about 45' away and to the west, more than 3 fields of view. 73P itself gives very small residuals (sub-arcsecond), so Ramon was definitely observing in the right place. Mark calculated that the presumed fragment, which is clearly visible in the three stacked frames, is 329"E and 79"N. The movement comes out as pretty nearly identical to 73P over nearly 2 hours from 02:07-03:55UT. The presumed fragment "f", which must be an old fragmentation, presumably aphelic for it not to have been detected previously, is apparently at least 2 magnitudes fainter than the main nucleus, but too faint to measure accurately. OCCULTATION BY (20000) VARUNA OF 2UCAC 40675770 ON 2005 DEC 31 Juan Fabregat & Joseph Remis report the observation of Varuna-2UCAC 40675770 from the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory, La Palma, Spain. Observations were made with the CCD of the autoguider system of the 2.54-m Isaac Newton Telescope (INT). Images with an exposure of two seconds were obtained every ten seconds. 2UCAC 40675770 was clearly visible in all images between 06:00 and 06:25UT. Our observations cannot exclude an occultation shorter than ten seconds. In addition, we also obtained images with the Wide Field Camera at the INT throughout the night, during which Varuna was clearly visible approaching 2UCAC 40675770. Guy M Hurst