Discovery of C/2014 Q2

Comet C/2014 Q2, known as Comet Lovejoy, was discovered by the Australian amateur astronomer Terry Lovejoy using a small telescope with a digital camera. It was one of several comets he has found. Lovejoy brightened steadily and in January 2015 became visible to the naked eye from dark sites in the Northern Hemisphere, moving across the constellations Taurus and Perseus with a faint green coma. Observations with a radio telescope in France detected a large amount of ethyl alcohol and the sugar-related molecule glycolaldehyde in its gas, adding to evidence that comets contain complex organic molecules. It is a long-period comet with an orbit lasting thousands of years, so it will not return for a very long time.

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