Comets in 2020

comet discovered in 2020 by the WISE space telescope

periodic comet

comet

311P/PanSTARRS, also known as P/2013 P5 (PanSTARRS), is an active asteroid and Encke-type comet discovered by Bryce T. Bolin using the Pan-STARRS telescope on 27 August 2013. Observations made by the Hubble Space Telescope revealed that it had six comet-like tails. The tails are suspected to be streams of material ejected by the asteroid as a result of a rubble pile asteroid spinning fast enough to remove material from it. This is similar to 331P/Gibbs, which was found to be a quickly-spinning rubble pile as well.

non-periodic comet that possibly disintegrated during perihelion

88P/Howell is a periodic comet with a 5.5 year orbital period. It was discovered on 29 August 1981, by Ellen Howell. In 1975 the comet's perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) was 1.9 AU, but a close approach to Jupiter in 1978 perturbed the perihelion distance closer to the Sun. During the 2009 apparition the comet became as bright as apparent magnitude 8.

87P/Bus is an Encke-type comet with a current orbital period of 6.37 years around the Sun. It is the only comet discovered by Australian astronomer, Schelte J. Bus.

210P/Christensen is a Jupiter family comet with an orbital period of 5.7 years. It was discovered by Eric J. Christensen on 26 May 2003 in images taken by the Catalina Sky Survey and recovered in images obtained by STEREO, the first time a single-apparition comet was recovered by a spacecraft.

101P/Chernykh is a periodic comet which was first discovered on 19 August 1977, by Nikolaj Stepanovich Chernykh. This comet is orbiting the Sun at a distance of 5.8 AU with an eccentricity of 0.60 and an orbital period of 14 years. The elliptical orbit will bring it as close as 2.35 AU and as far as 9.28 AU from the Sun. It will next come to perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) in 2034. The orbital plane is inclined at an angle of 5.05° to the plane of the ecliptic.

Comet Urata-Niijima is a periodic comet in the Solar System discovered by Japanese astronomers Tsuneo Niijima and Takeshi Urata on October 30, 1986, at Ojima. The first orbit was calculated by Brian G. Marsden on November 5 giving an orbital period of 6.42 years.

84P/Giclas is a Jupiter-family comet with a 6.69-year orbit around the Sun. It is the only comet discovered by American astronomer, Henry L. Giclas.

58P/Jackson–Neujmin is a periodic comet in the Solar System with a current orbital period of 8.19 years.

Comet Maury, also known as 115P/Maury, is a Jupiter-family comet with an 8.83-year orbit around the Sun. It is the first of nine comets discovered by French astronomer, Alain J. Maury.

114P/Wiseman–Skiff is a Jupiter-family comet with a 6.67-year orbit around the Sun. It is the only comet discovered by Jennifer Wiseman and one of several by Brian A. Skiff.

91P/Russell, also known as Russell 3, is a periodic comet in the Solar System. It was discovered by Kenneth S. Russell in 1983.

156P/Russell–LINEAR is a Jupiter-family comet with an orbital period of 6.4 years. It was discovered by Kenneth S. Russell in September 1986.

comet

412P/WISE is an Encke-type comet with a 5.5-year orbit around the Sun. It is the first of many comets discovered by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), and has since been followed by ground observatories, among them the Mauna Kea Observatory.

Long period comet

oort cloud comet

Jupiter-family comet

249P/LINEAR is a Jupiter-family comet with an orbital period of 4.61 years. It was discovered by LINEAR on 19 October 2006. It is only active for a brief period around perihelion.

266P/Christensen is a Encke-type comet with a 6.63-year orbit around the Sun. It will next come to perihelion in December 2026. It has been suggested as the possible source of the 1977 "Wow! Signal", however this was later disproven by a follow-up study in 2020, where it was found out to be likely a maser-like flare from small hydrogen clouds in interstellar space instead.