C/1999 U4 (Catalina-Skiff) was discovered on October 31st 1999 by Tim Spahr with the Catalina Sky Survey and Brian Skiff from the
Lowell Observatory LONEOS project as a magnitude 17.0 object. After discovery
observations were found going back to September 18th 1999.
The comet reached perihelion at 4.92AU on
The light curve below shows principally variations due to the varying geocentric distance of the comet and, of course, from "noise" in the measurements. The rate of increase in brightness with heliocentric distance is very slow. The CCD magnitudes were measured in R with a 10" aperture. The CCD total magnitude with a 30" aperture. The comet's rate of brightening with heliocentric distance is very slow.
Observations by:
CCD aperture photometry
in apertures of 0'.2 and 0'.5 by:
Última actualización 12/06/2003
Por M.R. Kidger