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Amateur Comet Hunter Beats Computers to Discovery
By Dr. Tony Phillips
Science.NASA.gov
posted: 07:00 am ET
27 August 2001
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petriew_comet_010826 In centuries past astronomers discovered new comets the old-fashioned way: they peered through telescopes or simply looked toward the sky, hunting for faint smudges that no one had seen before. It was hard work, but lots of people did it. Comets are named after their discoverers, after all, and finding a new one can mean instant fame. Hale-Bopp, Hayakutake and Shoemaker-Levy are just a few of the names we know ... because of comets. But lately it seems just about every new comet is called "LINEAR" or "NEAT." Those are names, too, but not the names of humans. They're robots -- automated, computer controlled telescopes that scan the skies in a relentless search for near-Earth asteroids and comets. This year between January and mid-August such telescopes recorded 18 new comets, while humans had found none. Comet hunters -- the human kind -- just can't compete! At least that's how many beleaguered sky watchers have been feeling. But last weekend an amateur proved humans can still bag a comet and do it the old-fashioned way. Vance Petriew of Regina, Saskatchewan -- a computer consultant by day and an amateur astronomer by night -- was at the Saskatchewan Summer Star Party on August 18th when he turned his 20" telescope toward the Crab Nebula. Hopping from one star to another across the constellation Taurus, Petriew guided his telescope toward the famous supernova remnant -- but he never made it. He stopped instead at a curious smudge that appeared unexpectedly in his eyepiece. "I almost passed it by because I was looking for the Crab Nebula," says Petriew, "and this wasn't it." But there was something intriguing about the smudge, something that made Petriew investigate further. "Thinking it might be a galaxy, I looked at my star charts to see if any were nearby. Just then Richard Huziak (Saskatoon Centre, Royal Astronomical Society of Canada) happened to walk over for the first time that night." Huziak was familiar with the region of sky and knew that no eye-catching galaxy was in the vicinity. The pair quickly realized that Petriew had stumbled onto an unknown comet. 
Comet Petriew is slowly gliding between the constellations Taurus and Gemini, which
appear in the eastern sky before dawn. This star chart shows where to look on August 26, 2001.
"It's like winning the lottery!" says Petriew. "Only [two people] in the whole world discovered a comet last year the same way I did. It's pretty cool to have one named after me and I'm very excited!" Petriew announced his discovery hours later, and since then astronomers have been monitoring the newfound comet to learn more about it. Based on data spanning less that a week, it appears that Comet Petriew may be traveling around the Sun once every 5.5 years following an elliptical path that stretches from a point just inside Earth's orbit (0.95 AU) out to the realm of the giant planet Jupiter (5.3 AU). Next page: What's its orbital period?
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