120P/Mueller
Sign in to save120P/Mueller, also known as Mueller 1, is a Jupiter-family comet with an 8.4-year orbit around the Sun. It is one of 15 comets discovered by American astronomer, Jean Mueller.
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- Jupiter-family comet
- Parent body
- Sun
- Diameter
- 3.0
- Orbital period
- 3071.981782810144
Show 14 more facts
- discoverer or inventor
- Jean Mueller
- time of discovery or invention
- 1987-10-18
- provisional designation
- 120P/1987a1
- absolute magnitude
- 6.6
- orbital eccentricity
- 0.3365387805794772
- semi-major axis of an orbit
- 4.135678841937248
- periapsis
- 2.743862527603342
- apoapsis
- 5.527495156271154
- orbital inclination
- 8.79119538756936
- longitude of ascending node
- 4.442766953653403
- argument of periapsis
- 30.00802529800133
- mean anomaly
- 125.5745378069671
- time of periapsis
- 2453277.9369652006
- epoch
- September 6, 2007
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Encyclopedic overview
5 sectionsContents
- Observational history
- Physical characteristics
- Notes
- References
- External links
120P/Mueller, also known as Mueller 1, is a Jupiter-family comet with an 8.4-year orbit around the Sun. It is one of 15 comets discovered by American astronomer, Jean Mueller.
== Observational history == Jean Mueller first spotted the comet on photographic plates exposed from the Palomar Observatory on the night of 18 October 1987. She described the new comet as a diffuse 17th-magnitude object within the constellation Pisces. A condensation and an apparent tail about 20–30 arcseconds in length towards the south-southwest was also noted. Orbital calculations using follow-up observations until 27 October 1987 helped Daniel W. E. Green to determine Mueller's comet as periodic, at the time having an orbital period of roughly 8.21 years.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “120P/Mueller” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.