List of Comets in 2013

Comet PANSTARRS could refer to any one of the hundreds of comets discovered by the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System atop Haleakala in Maui. One of its discoveries (C/2011 L4) was a naked-eye comet visible in both the southern and northern hemisphere in early 2013.

The Mt. Lemmon Survey (MLSS) has discovered more Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) than any telescope on Earth. MLSS has also discovered comets. On March 23, 2012 images from MLSS captured a 20.7 magnitude comet (C/2012 F6). It reached perihlelion on March 24, 2013.

Comet Encke (2P/Encke) orbits our Sun once every 3.3 years, which is the quickest known orbit of any comet. The Taurids and Beta Taurids, which are meteor showers occuring each November and June, are believed to be the remains of the dust trail left by Comet Encke. Binoculars could be used to spot this comet, before its perihelion, beginning in late September of 2013.

On September 24, 2012 it was announced that we had a 2 mile (3 km) wide visitor in our solar system between Jupiter and Saturn in the constellation of Cancer. Comet ISON (C/2012 S1) had the potential to be as bright as a full moon in early December of 2013...if it could survive perihelion on November 28, 2013. Unfortunately it did not. The vast majority of the comet's nucleus evaporated in the Sun's corona.

 

Dozens of tiny comets, known as sungrazers or sunskirters, returned to tightly orbit the Sun in 2013, but they were only be visible from space observatories like SOHO and LASCO. The general public can comb through movies and images captured by SOHO, attempting to discover the next comet. It's not as impossible as it sounds, a comet is discovered every three days on average.