C/1959 Y1 Burnham
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Comet C/1959 Y1 was discovered on 30 December 1959 by Robert Burnham Jr (Lowell Observatory, Arizona, USA), that is 5 months before its perihelion passage. It was observed until 13 July 1960 [Kronk, Cometography: Volume 4].
Comet had its closest approach to the Earth on 27 April 1960 (0.203 au), 12 days after its perihelion passage.
This is a comet with nongravitational effects strongly manifested in positional data fitting.
Both solutions (GR and NG) given here are based on data spanning over 0.449 yr in a range of heliocentric distances: 1.63 au – 0.504 au (perihelion) – 1.81 au.
This Oort spike comet suffers moderate planetary perturbations during its passage through the planetary system; these perturbations lead to escape the comet from the planetary zone on a hyperbolic orbit (see future barycentric orbits).
See also Królikowska 2014 and Królikowska 2020.

solution description
number of observations 79
data interval 1960 01 04 – 1960 06 17
data type perihelion within the observation arc (FULL)
data arc selection entire data set (STD)
range of heliocentric distances 1.63 au – 0.50 au (perihelion) – 1.81 au
type of model of motion NT - non-gravitational orbits for asymmetric, standard g(r)
data weighting NO
number of residuals 146
RMS [arcseconds] 1.60
orbit quality class 2b
orbital elements (heliocentric ecliptic J2000)
Epoch 1959 12 18
perihelion date 1960 03 20.98570504 ± 0.00164281
perihelion distance [au] 0.50411205 ± 0.00006258
eccentricity 1.00022392 ± 0.00006681
argument of perihelion [°] 306.651819 ± 0.005717
ascending node [°] 252.643185 ± 0.001289
inclination [°] 159.600241 ± 0.000219
reciprocal semi-major axis [10-6 au-1] -444.19 ± 132.52
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.
Lower panel (panels): O-C diagram for this(two) solution (solutions) given in this database, where residuals in right ascension are shown using magenta dots and in declination by blue open circles.
non-gravitational parameters
A1 [10-8au/day2] 9.4823 ± 1.2439
A2 [10-8au/day2] 1.2762 ± 0.5724
A3 [10-8au/day2] 0.72509 ± 0.19787
m -2.15
n 5.093
k -4.6142
r0 [au] 2.808
α 0.1113
ΔT [days] -9.2749 ± 1.5467