Key facts
- Discovered by
- Pan-STARRS
- Discovery date
- 6 June 2011
- Epoch
- 20 March 2012 ( JD 2456006.5)
- Observation arc
- 3.27 years
- Orbit type
- Oort cloud
- Aphelion
- 68000 AU (inbound) , 4500 AU (outbound)
- Perihelion
- 0.30161 AU (q)
- Orbital period
- Millions of years (inbound), ~107,000 yr , (outbound solution for epoch 2050)
- Max orbital speed
- 76.7 km/s (172,000 mph)
- Inclination
- 84.199 °
- Last perihelion
- 10 March 2013
- Jupiter moid
- 0.17 AU
- Dimensions
- 1.0–2.4 km (0.62–1.49 mi)
- Synodic rotation period
- 5 hours
- Apparent magnitude
- 1.0, (2013 apparition)
via Wikipedia infobox
~7 min read
Encyclopedic overview
C/2011 L4 (PanSTARRS), also known as Comet PANSTARRS, is a non-periodic comet discovered in June 2011 that became visible to the naked eye when it was near perihelion in March 2013. It was discovered using the Pan-STARRS telescope located near the summit of Haleakalā, on the island of Maui in Hawaii.
Observational history
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “C/2011 L4” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.