87P/Bus
Sign in to save87P/Bus is an Encke-type comet with a current orbital period of 6.37 years around the Sun. It is the only comet discovered by Australian astronomer, Schelte J. Bus.
Key facts
- Comet.tjup
- 3.009
- Comet.name
- 87P/Bus
- Comet.image
- Comet 87P Bus u65z1f02r.fits.gz sci.jpg
- Comet.caption
- Comet 87P/Bus photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope on 7 June 2001
- Comet.discoverer
- Schelte J. Bus
- Comet.discovery_site
- Siding Spring Observatory
- Comet.discovery_date
- 2 March 1981
- Comet.mpc_name
- P/1981 E1, P/1987 B4
- Comet.epoch
- 31 May 2025 (JD 2459000.5)
- Comet.observation_arc
- 39.57 years
- Comet.earliest_precovery_date
- 9 February 1981
- Comet.obs
- 801
- Comet.perihelion
- 2.099 AU
- Comet.aphelion
- 4.776 AU
- Comet.semimajor
- 3.438 AU
- Comet.eccentricity
- 0.38918
- Comet.period
- 6.374 years
- Comet.inclination
- 2.603°
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Diameter
- 0.56
- Orbital period
- 2331.313629398277
- Image
- Comet 87P Bus u65z1f02r.fits.gz sci.jpg
Show 12 more facts
- time of discovery or invention
- 1981-03-02
- provisional designation
- 1981b
- absolute magnitude
- 12.7
- orbital eccentricity
- 0.3893476920698341
- semi-major axis of an orbit
- 3.440869358876915
- periapsis
- 2.101174815284378
- apoapsis
- 4.780563902469451
- orbital inclination
- 2.6023944932398
- longitude of ascending node
- 181.8898060895848
- argument of periapsis
- 24.75638615410691
- mean anomaly
- 126.7935222833317
- time of periapsis
- 2456646.4014816154
via Wikidata · CC0
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Article
6 sectionsContents
- Observational history
- Physical characteristics
- Orbit
- References
- Bibliography
- External links
87P/Bus is an Encke-type comet with a current orbital period of 6.37 years around the Sun. It is the only comet discovered by Australian astronomer, Schelte J. Bus.
== Observational history == It was discovered by Schelte J. Bus on the night of 2 March 1981 from a photographic plate taken with the 1.2m UK Schmidt telescope at the Siding Spring Observatory. Additional observations by Kenneth S. Russell noticed a faint tail about 20 arcseconds in length to the northwest, estimated to be 17.5 in apparent magnitude. Preliminary orbital calculations in 9 March 1981 had Brian G. Marsden to conclude that the comet may be a short-periodic one, which was later confirmed after Bus was able to find precovery images as early as 9–13 February 1981.