Small Apparent Outburst of Comet 241P/LINEAR
ATel #14877; 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 26 Aug 2021; 21:40 UT
Credential Certification: Bryce Bolin (bolin.astro@gmail.com)
We report an apparent outburst of comet 241P/LINEAR discovered in Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF; Bellm et al. 2019, PASP, 131, a8002) photometry, as measured in 5" radius apertures and calibrated to the PS1 photometric system. On 2021 Aug 10 at 11:41 UTC, the comet had an apparent r-band brightness of 18.31+/-0.05 mag. The comet brightened to r=17.86+/-0.04 mag by the next set of data taken Aug 12 at 11:42 UTC. The outburst was subsequently confirmed with the 0.7-m GROWTH India Telescope on Aug 12 at 22:16 UTC, when the comet had a brightness of r=17.85+/-0.06 mag. The 5" radius aperture encompasses the full extent of the ejecta in the first post-outburst image. Altogether, the apparent outburst had a strength of -0.45+/-0.06 mag. The comet was at 1.93 au from the Sun and 2.42 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).
