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
type of model of motion NT - non-gravitational orbits for asymmetric, standard g(r)
data weighting YES
number of residuals 2227
RMS [arcseconds] 0.51
orbit quality class 1b
orbital elements (barycentric ecliptic J2000)
Epoch 1709 08 10
perihelion date 2007 08 11.24482551 ± 0.00114027
perihelion distance [au] 1.01301107 ± 0.00000099
eccentricity 1.00001285 ± 0.00002135
argument of perihelion [°] 174.163910 ± 0.000236
ascending node [°] 65.978965 ± 0.000147
inclination [°] 134.779739 ± 0.000079
reciprocal semi-major axis [10-6 au-1] -12.69 ± 21.08
file containing 5001 VCs swarm
2006vzn6.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.