125P/Spacewatch
Sign in to save125P/Spacewatch is a Jupiter-family comet with a 5.53-year orbit around the Sun. It was discovered on 8 September 1991 by Tom Gehrels using the 0.91 m Spacewatch telescope at the Kitt Peak National Observatory. It was the first comet discovered with the use of a CCD, and also the faintest comet upon discovery up to that point. Its nucleus has a diameter of .
Key facts
- Comet.name
- 125P/Spacewatch
- Comet.image
- 125P 2024-06-03 image ZTF-sso-442-zr-size-8.5arcmin.png
- Comet.caption
- Comet 125P/Spacewatch photographed from the Zwicky Transient Facility on 3 June 2024
- Comet.discoverer
- Spacewatch
- Comet.discovery_site
- Kitt Peak Observatory
- Comet.discovery_date
- 8 September 1991
- Comet.mpc_name
- P/1991 R2, P/1996 F1
- Comet.designations
- 1990 XXIX, 1991x
- Comet.epoch
- 11 August 2015 (JD 2457245.5)
- Comet.observation_arc
- 33.12 years
- Comet.obs
- 1,297
- Comet.perihelion
- 1.523 AU
- Comet.aphelion
- 4.728 AU
- Comet.semimajor
- 3.126 AU
- Comet.eccentricity
- 0.51269
- Comet.period
- 5.526 years
- Comet.inclination
- 9.988°
- Comet.asc_node
- 153.19°
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- Jupiter-family comet
- Parent body
- Sun
- Diameter
- 1.6
- Orbital period
- 2018.50625799929
- Image
- 125P 2024-06-03 image ZTF-sso-442-zr-size-8.5arcmin.png
Show 15 more facts
- discoverer or inventor
- Tom Gehrels
- time of discovery or invention
- 1991-09-08
- site of astronomical discovery
- Kitt Peak National Observatory
- provisional designation
- 1990 XXIX
- absolute magnitude
- 12.5
- epoch
- September 7, 2010
- orbital eccentricity
- 0.5120182970216886
- semi-major axis of an orbit
- 3.1257515044807
- periapsis
- 1.525309542243511
- apoapsis
- 4.726193466717888
- orbital inclination
- 9.98646482268105
- longitude of ascending node
- 153.1875733844616
- argument of periapsis
- 87.29133593437996
- mean anomaly
- 200.4879723041154
- time of periapsis
- 2456340.877850362
Sources (2)
via Wikidata · CC0
~2 min read
Encyclopedic overview
3 sectionsContents
- Observational history
- References
- External links
125P/Spacewatch is a Jupiter-family comet with a 5.53-year orbit around the Sun. It was discovered on 8 September 1991 by Tom Gehrels using the 0.91 m Spacewatch telescope at the Kitt Peak National Observatory. It was the first comet discovered with the use of a CCD, and also the faintest comet upon discovery up to that point. Its nucleus has a diameter of .
== Observational history == The comet was discovered in images taken by the 0.91 m Spacewatch telescope at the Kitt Peak National Observatory by Tom Gehrels on September 8, 1991 as an essentially stellar object with an apparent magnitude of 21, with a tail more than 5 arcminutes long. Brian G. Marsden calculated a parabolic and an elliptical orbit, with the elliptical orbit suggesting an orbital period of 5.58 years and a perihelion date on 18 December 1990.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “125P/Spacewatch” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.