Orwell Astronomical Society (Ipswich)
Comet 240P NEAT, 25 November - 19 December 2025
Comet 240P/NEAT was discovered by Near Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) on 07 December 2002. It has an orbital period of 7.61 years. It came to opposition on 22 November 2025, and will come to perihelion on 19 December 2025.
I imaged the comet on 25 November, when it was situated in the constellation Taurus. The object is notable because in late-September/early-October, the nucleus split into two components, easily seen in the following imge.
Observing under a clear sky, both heads of the comet were visible, the "B" head approximately three magnitudes fainter than the "A".
The comet continues to display two heads, one much fainter than the other. In the image below, another body also appears in the field-of-view. The website of the International Astronomical Union Minor Planet Center (IAU MPC) provides access to a "MPChecker" which, given sky coordinates, time and an MPC observing site, returns a list of candidate objects. Orwell Park Observatory is close enough to my observing location so, using its MPC observatory code, 582, I was able to identify the object as 18289 (1992 JU2), a mid-sized, main-belt asteroid at around magnitude 17.8.
Nigel Evans