Small Apparent Outburst of Comet 99P/Kowal 1
ATel #14628; Michael S. P. Kelley (U. Maryland), Kritti Sharma (IITB), Varun Bhalerao (IITB), G. C. Anupama (IIA), Sudhanshu Barway (IIA) on behalf of the Zwicky Transient Facility Collaboration and GROWTH India Collaboration
on 14 May 2021; 23:07 UT
Credential Certification: Bryce Bolin (bolin.astro@gmail.com)
We report an apparent outburst of comet 99P/Kowal 1 discovered in Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF; Bellm et al. 2019, PASP, 131, a8002) data. On 2021 May 12 at 04:37 UTC, the comet had an apparent brightness of r=18.32 +/- 0.05 mag (PS1 system). All photometry presented is measured with a 5" radius aperture. In the next ZTF image of the comet, taken 2021 May 14 04:13 UTC, it had brightened to r=17.60 +/- 0.03 mag suggesting an outburst strength of -0.72 +/- 0.06 mag. The brightening was confirmed in follow-up images with the GROWTH India Telescope taken 2021 May 14 16:01 UTC, with an apparent brightness of r=17.78 +/- 0.03 mag. The comet is currently 4.87 au from the Sun, and 4.55 au from the Earth.
Based on observations obtained with the Samuel Oschin Telescope 48-inch Telescope at the Palomar Observatory as part of the Zwicky Transient Facility project. ZTF is supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. AST-2034437 and a collaboration including Caltech, IPAC, Weizmann Institute for Science, Oskar Klein Center at Stockholm University, University of Maryland, Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron and Humboldt University, TANGO Consortium of Taiwan, University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, Trinity College Dublin, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, and IN2P3, France. Operations are conducted by COO, IPAC, and UW.
The GROWTH India Telescope (GIT) is a 70-cm telescope with a 0.7 degree field of view, set up by the Indian Institute of Astrophysics and the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay with support from the Indo-US Science and Technology Forum (IUSSTF) and the Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB) of the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India (https://sites.google.com/view/growthindia/). It is located at the Indian Astronomical Observatory (Hanle), operated by the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA).
