C/1980 E1 Bowell
more info
Comet C/1980 E1 was discovered on 13 March 1980, two years before its perihelion passage, and was last seen on 30 December 1986 [Kronk and Meyer, Cometography: Volume 5]; later few prediscovery measurements going one month back to 11 February 1979 were found.

The comet made its closest approach to the Earth on 14 June 1982 (2.48 au), that was three months after its perihelion passage.

Solutions given here is based on data span over 6.88 yr in the range of heliocentric distances from: 7.47 au – 3.17 au (perihelion) – 13.91 au.

NG orbit using full data-arc is determinable.

Comet suffered strong planetary perturbations during its passage through the planetary system – the strongest ever noticed in the motion of actual near-parabolic comets. These perturbations lead to escape of the comet from the solar system on hiperbolic orbit with remarkable eccentricity of 1.054 (see future orbit).

See also Królikowska and Dones 2023, Królikowska and Dybczyński 2017,and Królikowska 2014.
solution description
number of observations 203
data interval 1980 02 11 – 1986 12 30
data type perihelion within the observation arc (FULL)
data arc selection entire data set (STD)
range of heliocentric distances 7.47 au – 3.36 au (perihelion) – 13.91 au
detectability of NG effects in the comet's motion comet with determinable NG~orbit
type of model of motion GR - gravitational orbit
data weighting YES
number of residuals 384
RMS [arcseconds] 1.11
orbit quality class 1a+
orbital elements (barycentric ecliptic J2000)
Epoch 1679 12 05
perihelion date 1982 04 05.02636764 ± 0.00049097
perihelion distance [au] 3.16938712 ± 0.00000236
eccentricity 0.99991023 ± 0.00000369
argument of perihelion [°] 134.602443 ± 0.000769
ascending node [°] 120.631407 ± 0.000777
inclination [°] 1.770364 ± 0.000044
reciprocal semi-major axis [10-6 au-1] 28.33 ± 1.16
file containing 5001 VCs swarm
1980e1bb.bmi
Upper panel: Time distribution of positional observations with corresponding heliocentric (red curve) and geocentric (green curve) distance at which they were taken. The horizontal dotted line shows the perihelion distance for a given comet whereas vertical dotted line — the moment of perihelion passage.
Middle panel(s): O-C diagram for a given solution (sometimes in comparison to another solution available in CODE), where residuals in right ascension are shown using magenta dots and in declination by blue open circles.
Lowest panel: Relative weights for a given data set(s).
Six 2D-projections of the 6D space of original swarm including 5001 VCs. Each density map is given in logarithmic scale presented on the right in the individual panel.