C/2014 E2 (Jacques), provisionally designated as S002692,[3] is a long-period comet discovered by the Brazilian astronomers Cristóvão Jacques Lage de Faria, Eduardo Pimentel, João Ribeiro de Barros and Marcelo Dias on the night of 13 March 2014.[4] It was the second comet discovered by the SONEAR Observatory team after comet C/2014 A4.
Overview
Observations were made with a 0.45-meter (17.7-inch) f/2.9 wide-field reflector telescope with equatorial assembly and CCD camera at the Southern Observatory for Near Earth Asteroids Research (SONEAR), located near Oliveira, Minas Gerais, Brazil.[5]
In late March 2014, C/2014 E2 (Jacques) appeared to contain a dense, bright coma (11.5-12 magnitude), visible with an 8-inch telescope.[5] It crossed the celestial equator on 8 May 2014 becoming a northern hemisphere object.[6] From 3 June 2014 until 17 July 2014 it had an elongation less than 30 degrees from the Sun.[6] The comet was visible in LASCO C3 on 21 June 2014.[7] C/2014 E2 peaked around apparent magnitude 6 in mid-July and was visible in binoculars above the glow of morning twilight.[8][9]
C/2014 E2 passed 0.085 AU (12,700,000 km; 7,900,000 mi) from Venus on 13 July 2014.[10] On 20 July 2014 the comet was near the naked eye star Beta Tauri.[11] On 22 August 2014 it passed Epsilon Cassiopeiae. It reached perigee (closest approach to Earth) on 28 August 2014, at 0.56 AU (84,000,000 km; 52,000,000 mi).[3] The comet passed about 3 degrees from Deneb from 4–5 September 2014.[12] On 14 September the comet was near Albireo.[13]
By October 2014 the comet had fainted to magnitude 10.[14]