Hello Bill,

I just encountered the following:

I want to see where 36P/Whipple is (I observed it as the last one from
A33 nearly one year ago). Find comet with a limiting magnitude set
fixed to 18 mag gives no result (as expected because the comet isn't
that bright). Now I set comets to on. On the display I see hundreds of
comet symbols. So far so good. Now I clicked on find comet. And the
result is: only a few comets brighter mag 14.0!
Now I set comet magnitude fixed to 99.0. And find comet gives me as
expected several hundred comets. But here it's difficult to find it
because the sorting algorithm for names isn't the best one. There
should also be a possibility to sort for the designation of a comet
like in http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/LastCometObs.html

The background is following: normally I now the designation (36P,
2005 G1) of a comet but not its name (was it LINEAR, LINEAR-NEAT,
P/LINEAR, P/LINEAR-NEAT ...)

This leads me to an old suggestion of mine for sorting by elongation:
it should begin with encreasing numbers for the evening and then
decreasing for the morning or at least morning and evening elongations
in two coherent blocks.

Clear skies
Bernd

Bernd Brinkmann

Sternwarte Herne, MPC code A18
Herne, Germany

e-mail: info@...
http://www.sternwarte-herne.de