Possible previously-undiscovered comet in the SERC-J survey?

I thought astronomy-minded GLP'ers might find this interesting. First, here's the possible comet as well as astrometry of its position at the time it was captured:
[link to flickr.com]
I found it in the SERC-J plate S769 (02NY) recorded on December 29th, 1983. A SIMBAD query revealed no known objects within 2 arcminutes of its position. Furthermore, all other images of that location show nothing there, which may actually indicate it's not a deep space object of any kind, comet or otherwise.

Another plate, S768 (02NB), was exposed 5 days later as part of the same survey and overlapped the same area of sky in the same color (blue). I could not find this object anywhere on that plate, though its appearance is unlike a typical single plate defect and indeed the log of the plate showing the object (02NY) does not indicate that there were any emulsion defects or static discharges that could account for it.

I sent an email to the UKSTU Royal Observatory responsible for taking the image and requested additional information about this plate and whether or not this is a defect or an actual object. I'll let you know when they reply. That it doesn't appear anywhere in the later plate covering the same region of sky may indicate it's not a comet but rather a more local source such as a diffuse cloud from a satellite fuel dump as that would not persist for that long. It could also be a previously unnoticed small static discharge on the plate, but as mentioned, the plate's log information does not indicate that (it's graded as a BI4 plate, static discharge plates are given an S in their grade).

All I can say is, thank goodness for CCD astrophotography; CCD problems are much easier to distinguish from actual detections.