Comet Hunting with the Autostar/Audiostar

[Piet Le Roux]

The comet prospects for 2020 does not look good and I am placing my hopes on 4 comets for viewing in the Southern Hemisphere :
C/2017 T2 ( PanSTARRS ), 2P/Encke (2020), 88P/Howell (2020) and 85D/Boethin (2020).
These comets should reach a brightness of more than than magnitude 10.
To get the Autostar/Audiostar to track comets accurately you must load it with fresh data (as I learnt in 2019) a good site to get your data is http://www.aerith.net/comet/future-s.html
You could enter the data via your controller but the naming of the elements on the site is not quite the same as that used by Meade, The Autostar needs 7 elements (the site descriptions are in brackets)
1)Epoch Date
2)Perihelion (q)
3)Eccentricity (e)
4)Argument of Perihelion (Peri.)
5)Longitudinal Ascending Node (Node)
6)Inclination (Incl.)
7)Absolute Magnitude : not important, I entered the brightest that it could get.
Here are the 4 comets in Meade format that you could load as a txt file with the Autostar Update software if you have a Autostar controller but if you have a Audiostar you must load it with the MyScope software,

C/2017T2(PANSTAR |2000|20200421.0000 | 1.615098| 0.999628| 92.9945| 64.378| 57.2305| 8|00.0 | MPC ???
2P/Encke(2020) |2000|20200725.8000 | 0.336721| 0.847998| 186.5625| 334.5517| 11.7646| 7|00.0 | MPC ???
88P/Howell(2020) |2000|20200928.0000 | 1.353087| 0.564357| 235.9118| 56.6843| 4.3836| 8|00.0 | MPC ???
85D/Boethin(2020 |2000|20200710.0000 | 1.128963| 0.775831| 65.3099| 333.0157| 4.1737| 8|00.0 | MPC ???

PS the MPC # is not essential.

[Makuser]

Hi Piet. It looks like you have all of the data and software ready. I wish you the best of luck in finding your Comet targets for this year.