C / 1992 B1 (Bradfield)

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C / 1992 B1 (Bradfield) [i]
Properties of the orbit ( animation )
Period:  March 20, 1992 ( JD 2,448,701.5)
Orbit type parabolic
Numerical eccentricity 1.0
Perihelion 0.500 AU
Inclination of the orbit plane 20.2 °
Perihelion March 19, 1992
Orbital velocity in the perihelion 59.6 km / s
history
Explorer WA Bradfield
Date of discovery January 31, 1992
Older name 1992 VII, 1992b
Source: Unless otherwise stated, the data comes from JPL Small-Body Database Browser . Please also note the note on comet articles .

C / 1992 B1 (Bradfield) is a comet that could only be observed from the southern hemisphere in 1992 .

Discovery and observation

The comet was in 1992 (local time) on the morning of Feb. 1 by William A. Bradfield in Australia with a mm 150 - f / 5.5 - Refractor discovered. It was his fifteenth comet discovery, a little over three years after his last. During this period he had searched for comets for a total of 129 hours. Bradfield estimated the comet's brightness to be about 10 mag. The comet was subsequently found on a photo taken on January 30th.

The comet could only be seen from the southern hemisphere. At the time of its discovery, the comet was still moving towards the sun , but it was soon discovered that its activity was greatly reduced. Its brightness did not increase significantly above the values ​​when it was discovered, although as expected it should have increased to around 7 mag. Possibly the comet dissolved, maybe its core disintegrated near the sun. The last observation was made on February 13th at the Mt John University Observatory in New Zealand . After he had passed the sun, he could no longer be found.

Scientific evaluation

In early March 1992, observations of the 18 cm OH emission line at Comet Bradfield were made with the Nançay radio telescope . No signal could be detected.

Orbit

For the comet, only a limited exact parabolic orbit could be determined from 19 observation data over a period of 11 days by Marsden , which is inclined by around 20 ° to the ecliptic . Nakano was able to derive similar orbit elements from 17 observation data. At the point of the orbit closest to the sun ( perihelion ), which the comet traversed on March 19, 1992, it was located at a distance of 74.8 million km between the orbits of Mercury and Venus . Already on 19./20. April 1991 he was unusually small distance of only about 1.83  AE on Jupiter flew. On February 21, 1992, it had approached the earth to about 0.98 AU / 147.3 million km. On March 25, it could have come close to Venus to around 39.8 million km.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Astronomical Society of South Australia: Comets Discovered from South Australia. Retrieved March 1, 2016 .
  2. ^ JD Shanklin: The comets of 1992. In: Journal of the British Astronomical Association. Vol. 108, No. 2, 1998, pp. 90-98 ( bibcode : 1998JBAA..108 ... 90S ).
  3. International Comet Quarterly: Split Comets. Accessed March 2, 2016 .
  4. ^ A b S. Nakano: OAA computing section circular NK 1486. Retrieved on March 2, 2016 (English).
  5. J. Crovisier, P. Colom, E. Gérard, D. Bockelée-Morvan, G. Bourgois: Observations at Nançay of the OH 18-cm lines in comets - The data base. Observations made from 1982 to 1999. In: Astronomy & Astrophysics. Vol. 393, 2002, pp. 1053-1064 doi: 10.1051 / 0004-6361: 20020673 ( PDF; 391 kB ).
  6. NASA JPL Small-Body Database Browser: C / 1992 B1 (Bradfield). Accessed March 2, 2016 .
  7. A. Vitagliano: SOLEX 11.0. Archived from the original on September 18, 2015 ; accessed on May 2, 2014 .