178P/Hug-Bell
Sign in to save178P/Hug–Bell is a Jupiter-family comet with a 6.9-year orbit around the Sun. It was discovered by Northeast Kansas Amateur Astronomers' League members Gary Hug and Graham Bell and is thought to be the first periodic comet to be discovered by amateurs. It was declared a comet less than two days after its initial discovery, after having its course confirmed on previous images.
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- Jupiter-family comet
- Parent body
- Sun
- Orbital period
- 2567.463684666904
- Image
- 178P 2021-01-07 image ZTF-sso-615-zg-size-5.6arcmin.png
Show 14 more facts
- discoverer or inventor
- Graham E. Bell
- time of discovery or invention
- 1999-12-10
- provisional designation
- 178P/1999 X1
- absolute magnitude
- 13.6
- orbital eccentricity
- 0.4729919523404931
- semi-major axis of an orbit
- 3.669474902953501
- periapsis
- 1.933842804541083
- apoapsis
- 5.405107001365918
- orbital inclination
- 10.97529382676345
- longitude of ascending node
- 103.5748531955486
- argument of periapsis
- 296.9463255581147
- mean anomaly
- 325.6448200596468
- time of periapsis
- 2456496.515769103
- epoch
- November 20, 2012
Sources (2)
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Encyclopedic overview
3 sectionsContents
- Orbit
- References
- External links
178P/Hug–Bell is a Jupiter-family comet with a 6.9-year orbit around the Sun. It was discovered by Northeast Kansas Amateur Astronomers' League members Gary Hug and Graham Bell and is thought to be the first periodic comet to be discovered by amateurs. It was declared a comet less than two days after its initial discovery, after having its course confirmed on previous images.
== Orbit == Hug–Bell's orbital period is about seven years; its orbit is eccentric, though less so than many comets. Hug–Bell's orbit lies entirely outside the orbit of Mars, but at its aphelion overlaps in solar distance with the orbit of Jupiter. Because it never comes closer to the Sun than about , it is never expected to be a very bright comet, with a typical perihelion magnitude of 18–19.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “178P/Hug-Bell” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.