[BAA Comets] C/2018 Y1 Iwamoto

[Nick James]

The latest astrometry means that we can now be fairly confident about 
the path that this comet will take across the sky. The one-sigma 
uncertainty around the time of closest approach on February 12 is now 
only 10 arc minutes. I've posted some updated charts here:

https://www.britastro.org/node/16796

Note the close approach to the nice barred spiral galaxy, M95, on the 
morning of February 11. It is still to early to say how bright the comet 
will be since there is a very large scatter on the magnitudes reported 
so far but if we are lucky it might reach magnitude 6 at closest 
approach although it will be around a quarter of a degree across. It is 
currently around mag 10.5. The attached image was obtained from Siding 
Spring yesterday.

Nick.



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