The comet was not discovered by mere luck, but the result of dedicated effort. Martin Mašek used the free time of the FRAM telescope in Argentina to scan the sky near the western horizon soon after sunset and check for possible new objects. This effort bore fruit on the night of December 24-25, when a very small spot appeared in the field of view. When Martin found it again the next night, he became slightly optimistic that it might in fact be a new discovery. After confirmation of its existence not only by another FRAM telescope, but also by other observers around the world and, most importantly, by the 1.5 m Danish telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile, the discovery was confirmed by the Minor Planet Center. The comet was named after its sole discoverer “Mašek”.

The telescope used to discover it consists of a pair of cameras, a G4-16000 (CCD) and a C4-16000 (CMOS), both attached to photographic lenses with a focal length of 300 mm. The large camera sensors combined with the short focal length optics resulted in an exceptional field of view of 430 × 430 minutes. However, the comet was discovered by the CMOS camera C4, due to its higher sensitivity and, most importantly, much faster download, serving to capture the largest possible area of the sky in the shortest possible time.

For more details about the C4-16000 see the C4 Camera Product Page.

Images on this page courtesy of Martin Mašek and Hana Kuèáková.