On 15th November, D. J. Tholen, University of Hawaii, reported the discovery of an unknown comet in three images taken with the 8.2-m Subaru telescope by himself with C. Trujillo, the comet was first noticed in the images by S. Sheppard. Tholen noted that the static images show a tail extending at least 8″ in position angle 235 deg; however, while blinking the images, it’s possible to see a tail twice as long as that. Magnitude and or size predictions have not been issued anywhere yet but watch this space. Below are the preliminary orbital elements for the comet.
T = 2016 Sept. 2.1524 TT Peri. = 72.5958
e = 0.709704 Node = 310.7420 2000.0
q = 9.181726 AU Incl. = 10.9874
a = 31.628871 AU n = 0.0055409 P = 177.9 years
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