Orbit
Astronomer Brian Marsden of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory calculated that Comet Lulin reached its perihelion on January 10, 2009, at a distance of 113 million miles (182 million kilometers) from the Sun.
The orbit of Comet Lulin is very nearly a parabola (parabolic trajectory), according to Marsden. The comet had an epoch 2009 eccentricity of 0.999986, and has an epoch 2010 eccentricity of 0.999998. It is moving in a retrograde orbit at a very low inclination of just 1.6° from the ecliptic.
Given the extreme orbital eccentricity of this object, different epochs can generate quite different heliocentric unperturbed two-body best-fit solutions to the aphelion distance (maximum distance) of this object. For objects at such high eccentricity, the Suns barycentric coordinates are more stable than heliocentric coordinates. Using JPL Horizons, the barycentric orbital elements for epoch 2014-Jan-01 generate a semi-major axis of about 1200 AU and a period of about 42,000 years.
Read more about this topic: Comet Lulin
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