C/2021 O3 PanSTARRS
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Comet C/2021 O3 was discovered on 26 July 2021 with the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope (Haleakala), that is about nine months before its perihelion passage. it was followed until 12 July 2022.
Comet had its closest approach to the Earth on 8 May 2022 (0.601 au), about 17 days after its perihelion passage. At that moment it was already partially disintegrated.
Because comet started to disintegrate just before perihelion the preferred GR solution given here is based on preperihelion data span over 0.521 yr in a range of heliocentric distances from 4.31 au to 1.78 au.
This was Oort spike comet with original semimajor axis of about 30,000-31,000 au.
See also: Evangelista-Santana et all (2023)
Comet had its closest approach to the Earth on 8 May 2022 (0.601 au), about 17 days after its perihelion passage. At that moment it was already partially disintegrated.
Because comet started to disintegrate just before perihelion the preferred GR solution given here is based on preperihelion data span over 0.521 yr in a range of heliocentric distances from 4.31 au to 1.78 au.
This was Oort spike comet with original semimajor axis of about 30,000-31,000 au.
See also: Evangelista-Santana et all (2023)
| solution description | ||
|---|---|---|
| number of observations | 669 | |
| data interval | 2021 06 26 – 2021 12 31 | |
| data arc selection | data generally limited to pre-perihelion (PRE) | |
| range of heliocentric distances | 4.31 au – 2.28au | |
| 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 | 1323 | |
| RMS [arcseconds] | 0.27 | |
| orbit quality class | 1b | |
| orbital elements (heliocentric ecliptic J2000) | ||
|---|---|---|
| Epoch | 2022 04 11 | |
| perihelion date | 2022 04 21.04769412 | ± 0.00026132 |
| perihelion distance [au] | 0.28731660 | ± 0.00000079 |
| eccentricity | 1.00009527 | ± 0.00000061 |
| argument of perihelion [°] | 299.992221 | ± 0.000121 |
| ascending node [°] | 189.019093 | ± 0.000128 |
| inclination [°] | 56.792577 | ± 0.000211 |
| reciprocal semi-major axis [10-6 au-1] | -331.60 | ± 2.12 |
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.