Two enigmatic comets

Late autumn and early winter this year will bring two ‘dark horse’ comets of interest to southern observers. Details of the discovery and early history of the first of these, C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS), were given in our April issue, where the relationship between this comet and the Great Comet of 1844 was also noted.

I wrote that C/2019 Y4 is intrinsically very faint and that it was, for that reason, likely to fade out and disappear as it approached perihelion. Yet, I also noted that there is circumstantial evidence that the great comet C/1844