THE ASTRONOMER Electronic Circular No 227 1988 Dec 18 21.22UT. Telecom Gold 72:MAG60138 Ed:Guy M Hurst, 16, Westminster Close, Kempshott Rise, Basingstoke, Hants, RG22 4PP, England. Telephone:(0256)471074.Int:+44256471074 Telex:265871(MONREF G) Quote"72:MAG60138 ATT G.HURST"in FIRST line. ------------------------------------------------------------------- COMET 1988q (SMM 7) During this past week A. L. Stanger, High Altitude Observatory, discovered a bright sungrazing comet during routine inspection of the coronagraph/polarimeter images from the Solar Maximum Mission. O.C.St. Cyr, Goddard Space Flight Center,communicates the following reductions by D. Pitone and B. Twambly, SMM Flight Dynamics Facility, of Stanger's measurements (accuracy 0.1 solar radii and 1 deg p.a.): 1988 UT R.A. (1950) Decl. Oct. 24.68333 13 52 10 -12 21.6 24.74861 13 54 05 -12 12.6 Another observation at Oct. 24.81 had the comet's head under the occulting disk, and the comet was not detected as it receded from the sun. As in the case of SMM 5 some 13 days earlier (cf. IAUC 4668), parts of the tail of SMM 7 saturated the vidicon detector, suggesting that SMM 7 was also brighter than mag -4. The tail was straight and had a sharp southern edge. Computations by the undersigned show that the observations can be represented within 1 arcmin by the orbital elements for SMM 5 and T = 1988 Oct. 24.87ET, and the fit is even better with T= 1988 Oct. 24.88 ET and q changed from 0.0053 to 0.0058 AU. IAUC 4692 SUPERNOVA 1988Z IN MCG +03-28-022 C.Pollas, Observatoire de la Cote d'Azur reports his discovery with the 0.9-m CERGA Schmidt of a possible supernova in the above galaxy (RA 10h49.2m DEC +16 16',1950). The object of 17.4 on Dec 14 is 11" east, 2" south of the nucleus. IAUC 4691 TA INDEX We welcome Mike Collins to our group. His mailbox is 72:MAG36908. Guy M Hurst