Discovery story and images of C/2004 Q2 (Machholz)

On August 27 Don Machholz found his 10th comet, almost 10 years and 1457 hours searching
since his last find, C/1994 T1. You can read his discovery story here.
The mag. 11 object was located in Eridanus, slowly moving east and slightly south towards Lepus.

On September 3 Vello Tabur reported to the comets mailing list that he found prediscovery images
of this comet, obtained on May 27. His full report can be found here.
Subsequently even earlier images, of May 15, were found by Jäger and Rhemann on their images of
C/2002 T7 taken in Namibia.

Astrometry since discovery now confirms that this is an old comet moving in an elliptical orbit
with a period of about 110000 years.


C/2004 Q2 (Machholz) on May 15 by Jäger and Rhemann.




On the evening of January 1, 2005 Michael Jäger and
Gerald Rhemann took this composite image of comet
Machholz, showing a complex gastail and the onset
of the dusttail. Details are given on the
full size image.





This composite image was taken on the evening
of January 2, 2005, some 25 hours later.
Note the dramatic changes in the gastail!
Details are given on the full size image.






On the evening of January 6, 2005 around 18h45m UT Carl Johannink and Romke Schievink took this
image of C/2004 Q2 and the Pleiades from a location some 3km north of Gronau, Germany.

It is a stack of three 8-second exposures with a Canon 300D-camera equipped with a 85mm
f/1.2 lens.





On the evening of January 15, 2005 around 22h25m UT Carl Johannink and Romke Schievink took another
image of C/2004 Q2; this time it was close to the well known eclipsing binary Algol.

They used the same location, equipment and procedures as described before.






On the evening of February 7 around 19h45m UT the Schievink/Johannink team took this image from
their regular observing site some 3 km north of Gronau. It is the sum of two 30 second exposures
taken with a 475mm F/3.8 Wright-Väisälä camera equipped with a Canon 10D body.