99P/Kowal
Sign in to saveAlso known as 1977f Kowal, 1977 III Kowal, 1991i Kowal, 1992 VI Kowal
99P/Kowal, also known as Kowal 1, is a periodic comet in the Solar System that orbits out by Jupiter and has a 15 year orbital period. It has been observed regularly since 2019. Its most recent perihelion occurred in April 2022, and it is expected to return by May 2037.
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- Jupiter-family comet
- Parent body
- Sun
- Diameter
- 10.2
- Orbital period
- 5550.586452636229
Show 14 more facts
- discoverer or inventor
- Charles T. Kowal
- time of discovery or invention
- 1977-04-24
- provisional designation
- 1977 III
- absolute magnitude
- 6.7
- epoch
- December 22, 2014
- orbital eccentricity
- 0.2296848037533113
- semi-major axis of an orbit
- 6.135175111809532
- periapsis
- 4.72601862026136
- apoapsis
- 7.544331603357703
- orbital inclination
- 4.337463321740445
- longitude of ascending node
- 28.17946893961375
- argument of periapsis
- 174.1919145036272
- mean anomaly
- 187.1904687650789
- time of periapsis
- 2459677.9284526636
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Encyclopedic overview
3 sectionsContents
- Observational history
- References
- External links
99P/Kowal, also known as Kowal 1, is a periodic comet in the Solar System that orbits out by Jupiter and has a 15 year orbital period. It has been observed regularly since 2019. Its most recent perihelion occurred in April 2022, and it is expected to return by May 2037.
== Observational history == Charles T. Kowal discovered this comet shortly after reporting the discovery of asteroid 2063 Bacchus (then known as 1977 HB) on the night of 24 April 1977. It had already passed perihelion when it was first spotted as a 16th-magnitude object within the constellation Virgo. Orbital calculations by Shuichi Nakano and Brian G. Marsden predicted that the comet has a 15-year orbit around the Sun, and was expected to return by 1992. It was successfully recovered by James V. Scotti from the Kitt Peak Observatory's Spacewatch program on 21 February 1991.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “99P/Kowal” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.