Amrumer discovers previously unknown comet | NDR.de – News

by Joerg Jacobsen

Official confirmation came last night from the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams at Harvard University in the USA: The scientists confirm the discovery of comet P/2023 C1, which is now called Jahn. The comet is about as far from Earth as the Sun, but only about two kilometers in diameter. The celestial body cannot be seen with the naked eye. Not even the high-performance computers in the observatories with their artificial intelligence have discovered it. Jost Jahn has been using a telescope in southern France remotely for years. The comet can be seen as a tiny dot in images he took with it in mid-February. “This comet was about ten pixels in size and a little diffuse in the outer areas,” said Jost Jahn on Friday in an interview with NDR Schleswig-Holstein. “You have to imagine it like a blurred star.” According to Jahn, this lack of focus can be explained by the escaping gases.

Watched the sky for more than 1,000 nights

Jost Jahn’s main job is dentist on the North Sea island of Amrum, but he has been observing the sky in his free time for years. “When I was young, we searched the sky with the naked eye,” he says. “You can’t find anything new there anymore, because the professional observatories have search programs that intercept something like that.” According to his own statements, Jahn belongs to a small group of about 30 hobby astronomers worldwide who have specialized in finding comets. In recent years he has taken several hundred thousand pictures and observed the sky for more than 1,000 nights – and had them observed with the help of computers. “I’m happy that I’ve had success after such a long time. It’s a dream of every amateur astronomer,” says Jahn.

Jost Jahn has been fascinated by celestial bodies since a young age.

Comet Jahn returns every seven years

The special thing about the Jahn Comet: It is a periodic comet that comes back about every seven years. “Many comets only pass the sun once, then fly out and never come back,” explains the amateur astronomer. In seven years, Jost Jahn wants to look up at the sky again with a telescope – in search of the comet that bears his name.

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