113P/Spitaler

Observational history

1890 apparition and discovery

While attempting to observe C/1890 V1 (Zona), which was just discovered about two days earlier, Rudolf Ferdinand Spitaler spotted a new comet on the night of 17 November 1890. He described it as a very nebulous object positioned very close on where Zona's Comet was predicted to be, albeit fainter than the latter. Both comets were found within the constellation Auriga.

It was last detected on 4 February 1891, when Spitaler described it as very faint and diffuse.

Loss and recovery

Spitaler, together with George Mary Searle, James Francis Tennant, and John Russell Hind, calculated orbits based on the observations, but despite predictions of a return in 1897, it was lost and remained so for the next 102 years. Around this time, the comet made two close approaches to Jupiter between 1947 and 1983, at distances of 1.318 AU and 0.401 AU, respectively.

On 24 October 1993, the comet was rediscovered by James Vernon Scotti from the Spacewatch survey. It was confirmed as the same object as Spitaler's Comet when Brian G. Marsden calculated its orbit and connected its 1890 and 1994 apparitions. It was then subsequently observed on every apparition up to the present day.

Physical characteristics

Photometric observations of the comet until 2000 revealed that the nucleus of Spitaler's Comet has an effective radius of around 1.15 km.

Notes

References

| access-date= 2025-11-20 }}

| access-date= 2022-06-21 }}

| trans-title= Discovery of two new comets

| access-date= 2025-11-20 }}