Small Apparent Outburst of comet 44P/Reinmuth 2
ATel #14787; Michael S. P. Kelley (U. Maryland), Kritti Sharma (IITB), Harsh Kumar (IITB), Varun Bhalerao (IITB), G. C. Anupama (IIA), Sudhanshu Barway (IIA) on behalf of the Zwicky Transient Facility Collaboration and GROWTH India Collaboration
on 15 Jul 2021; 02:15 UT
Credential Certification: Bryce Bolin (bolin.astro@gmail.com)
We report an apparent outburst of comet 44P/Reinmuth 2 discovered in Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF; Bellm et al. 2019, PASP, 131, a8002) data. All photometry is measured in a 5" radius aperture and calibrated to the PS1 photometric system. On 2021 July 11 at 05:32 UTC, the comet had an apparent r-band magnitude of 18.50 +/- 0.08. In the next image of the comet, taken 2021 July 13 at 04:28 UTC, it had brightened to g=17.82 +/- 0.05 mag, followed by a second image at 05:02 UTC with r=17.39 +/- 0.04 mag, yielding an apparent outburst strength of -1.1 +/- 0.1 mag for the given aperture size. The brightening was confirmed in follow-up images with the 0.7-m GROWTH India Telescope taken on 2021 July 13 at 16:40 UTC, with an apparent brightness of r=17.59 +/- 0.02 mag, indicating material was already leaving the 5" aperture. At the time of the first outburst image, the comet was 2.92 au from the Sun and 2.13 au from the Earth. The next perihelion passage will take place 2022 April 23 (MPEC 2014-P41).
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).
