Observations of Comet Iras-Araki 1983D at La-Silla

As mentioned already in the last issue of the Messenger, a very exciting comet crossed the Earth's neighbourhood a few months ago. First discovered by the infrared satellite IRAS, then by two amateurs, Araki (Japan) and Alcock (UK), this comet approached the Earth with a minimum distance of 0.03 AU on May 12, 1983. The previous record of such a minimum distance was in 1770 with Comet Lexeil.