An outburst of Comet 4P/Faye
ATel #14967; Zhong-Yi Lin (IANCU), Michael S. P. Kelley (U. Maryland), Wing-Huen Ip (IANCU)
on 13 Oct 2021; 09:51 UT
Distributed as an Instant Email Notice Comets
Credential Certification: Zhong-Yi Lin (zylin@astro.ncu.edu.tw)
We report the discovery of an outburst of comet 4P/Faye from SLT (40cm telescope) at Lulin Observatory and Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) at Palomar Observatory. The outburst was observed to begin on 2021 August 26 with its brightness suddenly increasing by ~ 1.0 mag (Johonson-Cousins R filter, effective central wavelength 634.9nm, FWHM 106.56 nm) within 4 days, as measured through a radius of 10,000 km. Ten days after the outburst, with comet 4P/Faye near perihelion, the brightness appeared to have returned to a quiescent level that was brighter by 0.4 mag than that measured before the outburst. ZTF images taken September 4 through 16 show a slow moving cloud of debris traveling in the anti-solar direction. Photometry was calibrated to the PS1 catalogue and measured with the same aperture radius (10,000 km).
