Dear Vladimir and Michael Mattiazzo: I am *relieved* that CBAT 5538 provides the missing timeline and important details of all the independent discovery work carried out by not only the three of us in measuring the comet’s very coarse astrometry in SWAN, but the essential confirmation attempts undertaken by a small army of ground-based observers cued by our ephemerides.

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I was a bit crestfallen by the short shrift given in MPEC 2025-G102 to the importance of the discovery observations and measured astrometry by Vladimir, Michael and myself. (After 12+ manhours of back-and-forth with MPC by Bill Gray and myself, we were finally able to get SWAN astrometry accepted by MPC.) ?SWAN comet finders all know going in that we have no naming rights – that the comet will get a SWAN name designation, just as SOHO and STEREO comets are named after those respective spacecraft/instruments. Brian Marsden (R.I.P.) understood and appreciated the contributions of “citizen scientists,” and so he was supportive of at least publicly crediting these discovery efforts.

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I thought perhaps that MPEC 2025-G102 would follow the precedent of 2023-D49 which provided clear credit to Vladimir for the discovery of C/2023 A2 (SWAN) in its opening paragraph:

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This was the first time ever that SWAN astrometry actually appeared in an MPEC. But, alas, none of those discovery details were given in MPEC 2025-G102:

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No mention of Vladimir, and indeed there would have been no mention of Michael Mattiazzo in the MPEC if not for his iTelescope follow up observations using U94. The 249 astrometry reported happens to be mine (due to the somewhat excruciating efforts of Bill Gray and myself mentioned above), but I should think Michael’s or Vladimir’s would have been equally valid (though perhaps missing the SWAN instrument details), and their astrometry was reported to CBAT up to two days prior to mine.

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The bottom line is that we need a better reporting and acknowledgment system. Comets first found in SWAN data are quite rare – now just 21 of them since 1997 – and at least a couple of those discoveries reverted to prior designations (e.g. P/2018 HT3). The SWAN experts who do this work (are there even a dozen of us alive?) have surely earned some recognition for their hundreds if not thousands of hours’ work per actual comet discovery.? --Rob

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