Comet C/2015 T5 (Sheppard-Tholen) Discovered

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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