[BAA Comets] Observers J-F Soulier and JJ Gonzalez capture Comet 29P/S-W1 undergoing a strong outburst

[Shanklin, Jonathan D.]

Juan Jose Gonzalez is a visual observer, and one of our major contributors of such observations.  Congratulations to him on rivaling the imagers, continuing in the tradition set by George Alcock.  I hope this encourages other observers to take up systematic visual observing and reporting of magnitudes.


Regards,

Jonathan Shanklin


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From: Comets-disc <comets-disc-bounces at lists.britastro.org> on behalf of Richard Miles <rmiles.btee at btinternet.com>
Sent: 11 July 2017 00:21
To: Observadores_cometas at yahoogroups.com; comets-ml at yahoogroups.com; BAA Comets discussion list
Subject: [BAA Comets] Observers J-F Soulier and JJ Gonzalez capture Comet 29P/S-W1 undergoing a strong outburst

For the very first time the onset and development of an outburst of
enigmatic comet 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann has been captured thanks to
independent observations by Jean-François Soulier and Juan Jose Gonzalez
Diaz on 2017 July 02. Details can be found on the BAA webpage:

https://www.britastro.org/node/10684

That BOTH observers were carrying out a time-series of CCD images at the
SAME time is an amazing coincidence especially when it is realised that this
is only the SECOND such strong outburst so far during 2017 and that such an
event is more or less over and done within a time-window of about one hour!

29P was discovered 90 years ago and at last we have some hard data showing
the onset of an outburst event. The beginning of the outburst is very sudden
and, as such, it is clearly a singular event reminiscent of a cryovolcanic
eruption at the nucleus. Analysis of the form of the rising lightcurve
should provide some valuable insight into this possibility.

The actual event was also the third very significant outburst within less
than 10 days and it is likely that the all three are inter-related in some
way, e.g. the first event triggered the second, which triggered the third.
Since the July 2nd event, a fourth outburst has also taken place just 3.5
days later! See Figure 3 at the above URL to see an example of the
photometric lightcurve these past 45 days.

Extremely well done Jean-François and Juanjo.

Congratulations,
Richard Miles
BAA

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