Comet 2002 E2 was discovered by my friend Doug Snyder in the course of a visual search for comets, and by Shigeki Murakami a few hours later in Japan. We are performing astrometry and photometry of this object.
COD 933
CON J. Medkeff, 5110 S. Equestrian, Sierra Vista AZ 85650
CON [ ]
OBS J. Medkeff
MEA J. Medkeff
TEL 0.30-m f/5 Schmidt-Cassegrain + CCD
ACK 2002 E2
NET A2.0
T00030 C2002 03 13.46069 18 57 18.55 +01 03 13.7 10.8 R 933
T00030 C2002 03 13.46596 18 57 18.83 +01 03 32.4 10.8 R 933
T00030 C2002 03 13.47207 18 57 19.15 +01 03 53.8 10.7 R 933
T00030 C2002 03 13.47736 18 57 19.57 +01 04 14.2 10.8 R 933
T00030 C2002 03 13.48262 18 57 19.92 +01 04 33.3 10.8 R 933
T00030 C2002 03 13.49314 18 57 20.53 +01 05 10.9 10.9 R 933
T00030 C2002 03 13.50362 18 57 21.62 +01 05 50.8 10.8 R 933
T00030 C2002 03 13.50888 18 57 21.53 +01 06 08.1 10.8 R 933
Photometry between March 13.46069 and 13.50888 UT on nine images of 2002 E2, fitting a circular aperture at the 22nd mag/arcsec^2 isophote (= 79 arcseconds aperture diameter) and LONEOS.phot secondary standard stars in the R passband, to 2002 E2's coma follows. No observations were made in other passbands with apologies to gas/dust production gurus. The field is extremely crowded. Stars within the circular aperture and sky annulus were subtracted using PSF subtraction. The instrument is a 30cm Schmidt-Cassegrain; the comet has an average SNR (relative to photon noise) of 270 on the CCD images. Sky conditions were photometric.
2002 03 13.46069 10.81 R
2002 03 13.46596 10.80 R
2002 03 13.47207 10.79 R
2002 03 13.47736 10.81 R
2002 03 13.48262 10.80 R
2002 03 13.49314 10.80 R
2002 03 13.50362 10.80 R
2002 03 13.50888 10.80 R
Tail length to the same isophote is 8m 38s. The tail is slightly curved at approximately PA 150 degrees in these images. This PA is possibly influenced by a gradient in the image.