In this blog's Christmas 2016 post I wrote about The Immortal Fire Within, a biography of EE Barnard. I mentioned one of his comet discoveries, which was designated in the book as 1889 III. The biographer mentioned that the orbital period would set the comet's return in 2019, and I tried to make a mental note of it in case I could try to recover it--likely the last chance to see a Barnard comet in anyone now alive on earth's lifetime.
Well it turns out I forgot about this one until today, near the end of 2019. Not finding any reports of "1889 III" online I did some more searching, and found the correct designation is 177p/Barnard, and that its actual orbital period is 119 years, and that it was seen during the summer of 2006. So the book was incorrect. It was pretty bright too, 8th magnitude.
I'll need to keep better track of such observing opportunities...
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