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Small Outburst of Comet 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 1

ATel #14984; Kritti Sharma (IITB), Michael S. P. Kelley (U. Maryland), Tim Lister (Las Cumbres Observatory), Vishwajeet Swain (IITB), Harsh Kumar (IITB), Varun Bhalerao (IITB), G. C. Anupama (IIA), Sudhanshu Barway (IIA) on behalf of the GROWTH-India, Zwicky Transient Facility and LCO Outbursting Objects Key Project Collaborations
on 19 Oct 2021; 05:05 UT
Credential Certification: Varun Bhalerao (varunb@iitb.ac.in)

Subjects: Optical, Comet

We report observations of an outburst of Comet 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 1 discovered by Miles et al. (MISSION 29P). The epoch averaged photometry has been computed within a 5” aperture and is calibrated against PanSTARRS PS1 data release (Flewelling et al., 2018). The comet had brightened by -0.21+/-0.06 mag between the two r band images taken by GROWTH-India Telescope (GIT) on 2021 Oct. 16.879 and Oct. 16.948 UTC. This event was confirmed with observations from Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF; Bellm et al. 2019, PASP, 131, a8002) and Las Cumbres Observatory (LCO) 1-m telescopes at Tenerife Observatory (Z24, Z31). The comet had an apparent brightness of r=14.49+/-0.03 mag in LCO data taken on 2021 Oct. 17.026 UTC and r=14.57+/-0.02 mag in ZTF data taken on 2021 Oct. 17.467 UTC. The mean colours of the comet are g-r=0.56 and r-i=0.24, as measured using ZTF data outside of this event. The data are tabulated below along with heliocentric distance (rh) and observer-comet distance (delta).

 
Date           Tel Filter   rh  delta   m   m unc 
UTC                         au    au   mag   mag  
-------------- --- ------ ----- ----- ----- ------ 
2021-10-14.123 LCO    g   5.921 5.310 15.04  0.02 
2021-10-14.124 LCO    r   5.921 5.310 14.49  0.02 
2021-10-15.499 ZTF    r   5.922 5.292 14.66  0.02 
2021-10-16.879 GIT    r   5.922 5.275 14.73  0.04   
2021-10-16.948 GIT    r   5.922 5.275 14.52  0.05 
2021-10-16.949 GIT    g   5.922 5.275 15.06  0.04 
2021-10-17.025 LCO    g   5.922 5.274 15.06  0.04 
2021-10-17.026 LCO    r   5.922 5.274 14.49  0.03 
2021-10-17.366 ZTF    i   5.922 5.270 14.34  0.02 
2021-10-17.375 ZTF    i   5.922 5.269 14.35  0.02 
2021-10-17.450 ZTF    g   5.922 5.269 15.13  0.02 
2021-10-17.467 ZTF    r   5.922 5.268 14.57  0.02 

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 (IIA) and the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IITB) with funding from DST-SERB and IUSSTF. It is located at the Indian Astronomical Observatory (Hanle), operated by IIA. We acknowledge funding by the IITB alumni batch of 1994, which partially supports operations of the telescope. Telescope technical details are available at https://sites.google.com/view/growthindia/

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 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, the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, Trinity College Dublin, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, and IN2P3, France. Operations are conducted by COO, IPAC, and UW.

This work makes use of observations from the Las Cumbres Observatory global telescope network.