C/2021 E3 ZTF
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Comet C/2021 E3 was discovered on 9 March 2021 by the Palomar Mountain--ZTF, that is three months before its perihelion passage.

Comet had its closest approach to the Earth on 31 May 2022 (1.215 au), eleven days before its perihelion passage.

This comet shows visible trends in the O-C distribution for a GR orbit; see [O-C] diagram for solution 'a5'. The preferred NG solution given here ('nt') is based on data span over 2.85 yr in a range of heliocentric distances: 5.34 au – 1.777 au (perihelion) – 6.35 au.

This Oort spike comet suffers moderate planetary perturbations during its passage through the planetary system that lead to a more tight future orbit (semimajor axis of about 1,700-2,000 au).
solution description
number of observations 1450
data interval 2021 03 09 – 2024 01 13
data type perihelion within the observation arc (FULL)
data arc selection entire data set (STD)
range of heliocentric distances 5.34 au – 1.78 au (perihelion) – 6.35 au
type of model of motion NT - non-gravitational orbits for asymmetric, standard g(r)
data weighting YES
number of residuals 2848
RMS [arcseconds] 0.25
orbit quality class 1a+
orbital elements (barycentric ecliptic J2000)
Epoch 2328 01 18
perihelion date 2022 06 11.46260278 ± 0.00052150
perihelion distance [au] 1.77751501 ± 0.00000390
eccentricity 0.99908548 ± 0.00000290
argument of perihelion [°] 228.766207 ± 0.000104
ascending node [°] 104.517143 ± 0.000028
inclination [°] 112.70248 ± 0.000032
reciprocal semi-major axis [10-6 au-1] 514.50 ± 1.63
file containing 5001 VCs swarm
2021e3nt.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.