143P/Kowal–Mrkos

Observational history

Discovery and loss

Antonín Mrkos first reported the discovery of this comet as an asteroid named 1984 JD, after spotting it as a 16th-magnitude object on the night of 2 May 1984. In September 1984, Charles T. Kowal analyzed photographic plates exposed on the night of 23 April 1984 and he noted the comet as almost stellar-like, with a faint but discernible coma. Brian G. Marsden immediately recognized that Kowal's object is identical to that of Mrkos' discovery, allowing him to calculate an elliptical orbit for the object, which allowed Mrkos to notice that he indeed captured faint cometary activity on images he took on 19 May. However, it was not observed beyond that date, and was initially considered lost, subsequently redesignated as D/1984 H1.

Recovery

It was not observed during the comet's predicted apparition in 1992. Shuichi Nakano later revised his orbital calculations for the comet in 1997, which allowed him to predict that the comet may next return by 2000. It was successfully recovered on 9 March 2000, when LINEAR and LONEOS spotted an asteroid-like object with a comet-like orbit (****), which Marsden noted matched those predicted for Kowal–Mrkos.

References

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