C/2015 X7 ATLAS
more info
Comet C/2015 X7 was discovered on 12 December 2015 by Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) Team, that is about 7.5 months before its perihelion passage. Some prediscovery images of this comet were found: taken on 28 January 2015 by Pan-STARRS 1, Haleakala. This comet was observed until 16 June 2017.
Comet had its closest approach to the Earth on 8 February 2017 (5.909 au); about 6 months after its perihelion passage.
Solutions given here are based on data spanning over 2.38 yr in a range of heliocentric distances: 5.95 au – 3.685 au (perihelion) – 4.64 au.
This Oort spike comet suffers small planetary perturbations during its passage through the planetary system that lead to a more tight future orbit with a semimajor axis of about 5,000 au (see future barycentric orbits).

solution description
number of observations 628
data interval 2015 01 28 – 2017 06 16
data type perihelion within the observation arc (FULL)
data arc selection entire data set (STD)
range of heliocentric distances 5.95 au – 3.69 au (perihelion) – 4.64 au
type of model of motion NC - non-gravitational orbits for symmetric CO-g(r)-like function
data weighting YES
number of residuals 1244
RMS [arcseconds] 0.43
orbit quality class 1a+
orbital elements (barycentric ecliptic J2000)
Epoch 1713 05 01
perihelion date 2016 07 30.36131399 ± 0.00139254
perihelion distance [au] 3.68383676 ± 0.00001104
eccentricity 0.99988602 ± 0.00000779
argument of perihelion [°] 348.536597 ± 0.000270
ascending node [°] 139.838456 ± 0.000046
inclination [°] 57.582049 ± 0.000014
reciprocal semi-major axis [10-6 au-1] 30.94 ± 2.11
file containing 5001 VCs swarm
2015x7c5.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.