C/2002 T7 LINEAR
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Comet C/2002 T7 was discovered on 14 October 2002 with Lincoln Laboratory Near-Earth Asteroid Research project, that is about 1.5 yr before its perihelion passage. A few pre-discovery images were next found which were taken two days earlier during the same project. It was observed until 20 March 2006.
Comet had its closest approach to the Earth on 19 May 2004 (0.265 au), less than a month after its perihelion passage.
C/2002 T7 is a comet with non-gravitational effects strongly manifested in positional data fitting. The preferred solution given here is based on data taken only at large perihelion distances and spanning over 3.44 yr in a range of heliocentric distances from 6.91 au (pre-perihelion) to 8.08 au (post-perihelion), see picture.
A few other solutions based only of data taken before perihelion are also shown. Three are based on data until 4 December 2003 (p8, pn, pc) and one on shorter data-arc – until 17 April 2004 (p8). This last solution (p8) is about one year shorter than the previous solutions, and is limited to data taken well before the perihelion passage to the heliocentric distance of 2.5 au. This approach on the one hand allowed a reduction in the undesired effects associated with possible outburst events in this comet, and on the other hand allowed maintaining a very good quality orbit (quality reduction from class 1a+ to 1a) that can be used to the dynamical calculations back in time.
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). More details in Królikowska, Dybczyński and Sitarski and Królikowska 2020.

solution description
number of observations 2481
data interval 2002 10 12 – 2003 12 04
data arc selection data generally limited to pre-perihelion (PRE)
range of heliocentric distances 6.91 au – 2.5au
detectability of NG effects in the comet's motion comet with NG effects strongly manifested in positional data fitting
type of model of motion GR - gravitational orbit
data weighting YES
number of residuals 4893
RMS [arcseconds] 0.35
orbit quality class 1a
orbital elements (barycentric ecliptic J2000)
Epoch 1706 08 26
perihelion date 2004 04 23.02070993 ± 0.00007903
perihelion distance [au] 0.61544479 ± 0.00000040
eccentricity 0.99999133 ± 0.00000037
argument of perihelion [°] 157.728219 ± 0.000037
ascending node [°] 94.835149 ± 0.000015
inclination [°] 160.521123 ± 0.00001
reciprocal semi-major axis [10-6 au-1] 14.08 ± 0.60
file containing 5001 VCs swarm
2002t7p8.bmi
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.
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.