SKY & TELESCOPE NEWS BULLETIN APRIL 14, 1995
Jim Scotti reports that Comet Takamizawa-Levy has apparently split, based on his observations with the Spacewatch telescope. On April 5th and 6th, a second nucleus was spotted about 7 arcseconds away from the primary. The secondary was 2 magnitudes fainter than the primary, and it was not seen in images taken January 3rd. The comet passed through perihelion 11 months ago, and it's currently 600 million km from the Earth and Sun and thus out of reach for amateur telescopes. Comet theorist Zdenek Sekanina says the Spacewatch observations are consistent with the split occurring last September, three months after perihelion. Now the question is: will one nucleus be called Takamizawa and the other Levy?
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