C/2016 Q2 PANSTARRS
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Comet C/2016 Q2 was discovered on 26 August 2016 with the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope (Haleakala), that is more than 5 years before its perihelion passage. This comet was observed until the end of mid-2024 and is still observable.

Comet had its closest approach to the Earth on 24 May 2021 (6.805 au), about 2 weeks after its perihelion passage.

Preferred NG solution given here is based on data spanning over 7.63 yr in a range of heliocentric distances: 12.58 au – 7.08 au (perihelion) – 9.74 au.

This comet suffers tiny planetary perturbations during its passage through the planetary system; this is a long-period comet with original and future semimajor axes of about 7,500 au and 6,700 au, respectively.

#********************************** update of 'Oort spike' comets 2016 - 2020, comet no 2; long-period comet

solution description
number of observations 617
data interval 2016 08 26 – 2024 04 12
data type perihelion within the observation arc (FULL)
data arc selection entire data set (STD)
range of heliocentric distances 12.58 au – 7.08 au (perihelion) – 9.74 au
type of model of motion NC - non-gravitational orbits for symmetric CO-g(r)-like function
data weighting YES
number of residuals 1228
RMS [arcseconds] 0.52
orbit quality class 1a+
orbital elements (barycentric ecliptic J2000)
Epoch 2331 11 18
perihelion date 2021 05 09.83437501 ± 0.00215613
perihelion distance [au] 7.08217338 ± 0.00001279
eccentricity 0.99893064 ± 0.00001028
argument of perihelion [°] 84.464514 ± 0.000170
ascending node [°] 322.365149 ± 0.000029
inclination [°] 109.385035 ± 0.000016
reciprocal semi-major axis [10-6 au-1] 150.99 ± 1.45
file containing 5001 VCs swarm
2016q2dc.bpl
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 future swarm including 5001 VCs. Each density map is given in logarithmic scale presented on the right in the individual panel.