115P/Maury

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.

Key facts

Comet.name: 115P/Maury
Comet.image: 115P_2020-07-27_image_ZTF-sso-436-zr-fov-3.5_arcmin.png
Comet.caption: Maury's Comet photographed from the Zwicky Transient Facility in 27 July 2020.
Comet.discoverer: Alain J. Maury
Comet.discovery_site: Palomar Observatory
Comet.discovery_date: 16 August 1985
Comet.mpc_name: P/1985 Q1, P/1994 J1
Comet.epoch: 25 February 2023 (JD 2460000.5)
Comet.observation_arc: 35.39 years
Comet.obs: 1,435
Comet.perihelion: 2.059 AU
Comet.aphelion: 6.484 AU
Comet.semimajor: 4.272 AU
Comet.eccentricity: 0.51796
Comet.period: 8.83 years
Comet.inclination: 11.677°
Comet.asc_node: 176.01°
Comet.arg_peri: 121.00°

via Wikipedia infobox

~3 min read

Encyclopedic overview

7 sections

Contents

Observational history
Orbit
Physical characteristics
See also
Notes
References
External links

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.

== Observational history == Alain J. Maury discovered the comet while examining the photographic plates taken by James M. Schombert on the night of 16 August 1985. At the time, the comet was a diffuse 16th-magnitude object with a short tail located on the constellation Aquarius. Multiple follow-up observations from their colleagues at the Palomar Observatory between 20 and 23 August later confirmed its existence.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “115P/Maury” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.