The comet appeared in his electronic search program for Near-Earth Objects, which regularly scans the sky.

Unbeknownst to Tucker at the time, the LONEOS program, a professional search effort at Lowell Observatory, had already sighted the comet, but the program mistook the comet for a common Main Belt asteroid.

Both Tucker and LONEOS received joint recognition for the discovery.

Tucker says he plans to use the financial award toward expanding the search capacity of his instrumentation.

According to Daniel W. E. Green, Associate Director of CBAT, Williams and Tucker are unusual in that neither had ever discovered a comet before.

"Over the last 20 years, the sky has been pretty (thoroughly) searched by amateurs," Green says. "Not a lot of comets have gone unnoticed."

"Over 95 percent of comet reports are false alarms, he adds. "Since the Edgar Wilson Award was announced, many more false alarms have come up, to the point that a quarter of reports are not worth checking out, simply because the observer will say that he saw `something streaking across the sky.'"

Still, the introduction of the award is achieving its goal of increasing interest in astronomy.

"Like most other amateur astronomers, I observe the sky for the pure love and fascination of the universe in which we live," Williams says.