C/2018 U1 Lemmon
more info
Comet C/2018 U1 was discovered on 27 October 2019, almost four years before its perihelion passage, and was observed until the mid-2023 (as in February 2025).

Comet had its closest approach to the Earth on 18 June 2021 (4.14 au), about 4.5 months before its perihelion passage.

The preferred NG-solution given here is based on data spanning over 4.62 yr in a range of heliocentric distances 9.33 au – 5.00 au (perihelion) – 6.64 au

This Oort spike comet suffers moderate planetary perturbations during its passage through the planetary system that lead to a significantly more tight future orbit (semimajor axis of about 3,800 au).
solution description
number of observations 2485
data interval 2018 10 27 – 2023 06 09
data type perihelion within the observation arc (FULL)
data arc selection entire data set (STD)
range of heliocentric distances 9.33 au – 5.00 au (perihelion) – 6.64 au
type of model of motion NC - non-gravitational orbits for symmetric CO-g(r)-like function
data weighting YES
number of residuals 4524
RMS [arcseconds] 0.37
orbit quality class 1a+
orbital elements (barycentric ecliptic J2000)
Epoch 2330 01 07
perihelion date 2021 11 01.78193792 ± 0.00099898
perihelion distance [au] 4.99049143 ± 0.00000741
eccentricity 0.99870989 ± 0.00000582
argument of perihelion [°] 180.290700 ± 0.000128
ascending node [°] 75.423078 ± 0.000011
inclination [°] 108.343404 ± 0.000015
reciprocal semi-major axis [10-6 au-1] 258.51 ± 1.17
file containing 5001 VCs swarm
2018u1bc.bpl
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 future swarm including 5001 VCs. Each density map is given in logarithmic scale presented on the right in the individual panel.