C/2006 VZ13 LINEAR
more info
Comet C/2006 VZ13 was discovered on 13 November 2006 with Lincoln Laboratory Near-Earth Asteroid Research project; that is 9 months before its perihelion passage. In the early images this object has stellar appearance; however, soon a weak coma was detected. Observations have stopped 4 days after perihelion passage at the distance of 1.02 au from the Sun.
Comet had its closest approach to the Earth on 14 July 2007 (0.575 au), about 3.5 weeks before its perihelion passage.
Preferred solution given here is based on pre-perihelion data taken before 1 July 2007 and spanning over 0.751 yr in a range of heliocentric distances from 3.84 au to 1.23 au; with such a data limitation it was possible to derive the non-gravitational osculating orbit that gives O-C diagram free from trends in right ascension and declination.
This Oort spike comet was lost soon after perihelion; however, the future orbits for solutions based on entire data set (a5, n5, n6) are given here.
See also Królikowska and Dybczyński 2013 and Królikowska 2020.

solution description
number of observations 1173
data interval 2006 11 13 – 2007 08 14
data type almost all measurements before perihelion (PRE++)
data arc selection entire data set (STD)
range of heliocentric distances 3.84 au – 1.01 au (perihelion) – 1.02 au
detectability of NG effects in the comet's motion comet lost close to perihelion or split comet
type of model of motion GR - gravitational orbit
data weighting YES
number of residuals 2221
RMS [arcseconds] 0.75
orbit quality class 1b
orbital elements (barycentric ecliptic J2000)
Epoch 1709 04 12
perihelion date 2007 08 11.24825745 ± 0.00011878
perihelion distance [au] 1.01301774 ± 0.00000041
eccentricity 0.99998621 ± 0.00000346
argument of perihelion [°] 174.164378 ± 0.000098
ascending node [°] 65.978851 ± 0.000021
inclination [°] 134.779699 ± 0.000008
reciprocal semi-major axis [10-6 au-1] 13.61 ± 3.41
file containing 5001 VCs swarm
2006vza5.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.