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  • Australian Sky & Telescope

    SWAN hunting

    Jun 03, 2020 4 minutes
    by Michael Mattiazzo

    I work in the pathology industry, which, to the surprise of many, experienced a significant downturn in workload in April 2020 due to the COVID-19 crisis. As a result I grabbed the opportunity to take some time off work, and ‘lockdown’ gave me the chance to concentrate on my hobby, astronomy. And in the process I discovered a comet. As per International Astronomical Union naming guidelines, C/2020 F8 (SWAN) is not named after me as I did not use my own equipment.

    I found C/2020 F8 by searching data publicly available on a website of the Solar and Heliospheric Observer (SOHO) mission. The SWAN (Solar Wind ANisotropies) instrument is an ultraviolet camera aboard the

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