Comet 26P

Comet 26P, a photo by Nick Howes on Flickr.

Via Flickr:
MPEC 20
12-Y30, issued 2012 December 26, reports our recovery of comet 26P/Grigg–Skjellerup. We found the comet on 2012 December 05.6 and December 14.5 at about magnitude 20. We imaged it remotely with the 2.0-m f/10 from the Siding Spring-Faulkes Telescope South.




This comet is named after the singing teacher and amateur astronomer John Grigg and after J. Frank Skjellerup, an Australian telegraphist working at the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa. On July 10, 1992, comet 26P was visited by Giotto spacecraft after its successful close encounter with comet Halley. The Giotto camera has been damaged in the Halley flyby and there are no pictures of the nucleus. In 1972 the comet was discovered to produce a meteor shower (first predicted by Harold Ridley), the Pi Puppids, and its current orbit makes them peak around April 23, for observers in the sout
hern hemisphere, best seen when the comet is near perihelion.