The Edgar Wilson Award is an annual international award established in 1998 consisting of a monetary award and a plaque allocated annually to amateur comet discoverers. It is administered by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) through the IAU's Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams (CBAT). [1]
Edgar Wilson was an American businessman who lived in Lexington, Kentucky. [1] After he died in 1976, the Edgar Wilson Charitable Trust Fund was set up and awards were allocated in accordance with the terms of his bequest. [2]
Each year the award is divided between amateur astronomers who during that year, using amateur equipment, discover one or more new comets which are then officially named after them. The annual total award is of the order of US$20,000 but fluctuates from year to year. Since 2014 the award was not given, but reestablished in 2024 (without a donated price). In any year when there are no eligible discoverers, CBAT makes the award to the amateur astronomer or astronomers it considers "have made the greatest contribution toward promoting an interest in the study of comets". [2]
Although the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory has awarded the recipients, after 2014 the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams could confirm in 2024 that the awards for the comet discoveries in the period July 2014-June 2018 had been given. [3]
A list of recipients current to 2024: [4]
Among the first eight years' worth of Wilson Awards (1999–2006), 17 awards went to visual discoverers of comets, 10 awards went to CCD discoverers, and one award went to a photographic discoverer of a comet. (Here, an "award" is taken to mean one full award, meaning that some teams of two people—in cases of CCD discoveries—represent single cash awards that are split evenly between the team members, even though each member gets their own award plaque.)
David Howard Levy is a Canadian amateur astronomer, science writer and discoverer of comets and minor planets, who co-discovered Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 in 1993, which collided with the planet Jupiter in 1994.
Charles W. Juels was an American amateur astronomer and psychiatrist by profession, who became a prolific discoverer of minor planets after his retirement.
Paulo Renato Centeno Holvorcem is a Brazilian amateur astronomer and mathematician who lives in Brasilia, Brazil.
Robert H. McNaught is a Scottish-Australian astronomer at the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics of the Australian National University (ANU). He has collaborated with David J. Asher of the Armagh Observatory.
Masayuki Iwamoto is a Japanese astronomer from Awa in the Tokushima Prefecture. The Minor Planet Center credits him with the co-discovery of 6 asteroids made together with Japanese astronomer Toshimasa Furuta at the Tokushima-Kainan Astronomical Observatory (872) in 1988 and 1989. He also received the Edgar Wilson Award in 2013 for the discovery of comet C/2013 E2, in 2019 for the discovery of the comets C/2018 V1 and C/2018 Y1 and in 2021 for the discovery of C/2020 A2.
A sungrazing comet is a comet that passes extremely close to the Sun at perihelion – sometimes within a few thousand kilometres of the Sun's surface. Although small sungrazers can completely evaporate during such a close approach to the Sun, larger sungrazers can survive many perihelion passages. However, the strong evaporation and tidal forces they experience often lead to their fragmentation.
Donald Edward Machholz was an American amateur astronomer who was credited with the discovery of 12 comets that bear his name.
The Kreutz sungrazers are a family of sungrazing comets, characterized by orbits taking them extremely close to the Sun at perihelion. At the far extreme of their orbits, aphelion, Kreutz sungrazers can be a hundred times farther from the Sun than the Earth is, while their distance of closest approach can be less than twice the Sun's radius. They are believed to be fragments of one large comet that broke up several centuries ago and are named for German astronomer Heinrich Kreutz, who first demonstrated that they were related. These sungrazers make their way from the distant outer Solar System to the inner Solar System, to their perihelion point near the Sun, and then leave the inner Solar System in their return trip to their aphelion.
The Nibiru cataclysm is a supposed disastrous encounter between Earth and a large planetary object that certain groups believed would take place in the early 21st century. Believers in this doomsday event usually refer to this object as Nibiru or Planet X. The idea was first put forward in 1995 by Nancy Lieder, founder of the website ZetaTalk. Lieder claims she is a contactee with the ability to receive messages from extraterrestrials from the Zeta Reticuli star system through an implant in her brain. She states that she was chosen to warn mankind that the object would sweep through the inner Solar System in May 2003 causing Earth to undergo a physical pole shift that would destroy most of humanity.
Comet 96P/Machholz or 96P/Machholz 1 is a short-period sungrazing comet discovered on May 12, 1986, by amateur astronomer Donald Machholz on Loma Prieta peak, in central California using 130 millimetres (5.1 in) binoculars. On June 6, 1986, 96P/Machholz passed 0.404 AU from the Earth. 96P/Machholz last came to perihelion on January 31, 2023. The comet has an estimated diameter of around 6.4 km (4.0 mi).
Terry Lovejoy is an information technologist from Thornlands, Queensland, Australia, most widely known as an amateur astronomer. He has discovered six comets, including C/2011 W3 (Lovejoy), the first Kreutz Sungrazing comet discovered by ground-based observation in over 40 years. He is also known for popularizing procedures for modifying consumer-grade digital cameras so that they can be used for digital camera astrophotography.
An interstellar object is an astronomical object in interstellar space that is not gravitationally bound to a star. This term can also be applied to an object that is on an interstellar trajectory but is temporarily passing close to a star, such as certain asteroids and comets. In the latter case, the object may be called an interstellar interloper.
C/2007 Q3 , is an Oort cloud comet that was discovered by Donna Burton in 2007 at Siding Spring Observatory in New South Wales, Australia. Siding Spring came within 1.2 astronomical units of Earth and 2.25 AU of the Sun on October 7, 2009. The comet was visible with binoculars until January 2010.
479P/Elenin, with provisional designation P/2011 NO1 (Elenin), is a periodic comet with an orbital period estimated at 13.3 years.
Leonid Vladimirovich Elenin is a Russian amateur astronomer working with the ISON-NM observatory (H15) via the International Scientific Optical Network (ISON), which is the first Russian remote observatory in the West.
Michel Ory is a Swiss amateur astronomer and a prolific discoverer of minor planets and comets.
Comets have been observed for over 2,000 years. During that time, several different systems have been used to assign names to each comet, and as a result many comets have more than one name.
2I/Borisov, originally designated C/2019 Q4 (Borisov), is the first observed rogue comet and the second observed interstellar interloper after ʻOumuamua. It was discovered by the Crimean amateur astronomer and telescope maker Gennadiy Borisov on 29 August 2019 UTC.
Gennadiy Vladimirovich Borisov is a Russian telescope maker and amateur astronomer who discovered the first-known interstellar comet, 2I/Borisov, in 2019.
Tenagra Observatory and Tenagra Observatory II are astronomical observatories in Cottage Grove, Oregon and Arizona. The observatories house heavily automated robotic telescopes.