Orbit
The comet's orbit, later computed by John Russell Hind, showed a perihelion distance (closest approach to the Sun) of 4.05054 AU which is just within the orbit of Jupiter. However despite this it became visible, although faintly, to the naked eye, and indeed remained visible for six months in total. This suggests that its absolute magnitude or intrinsic brightness was unusually high, possibly as high as -3.0. It is therefore likely that the Comet of 1729 was an exceptionally large object, with a cometary nucleus of the order of 100 km in diameter. The JPL small-body database only uses three observations, a two-body model, and an assumed epoch to compute the orbit of this parabolic comet.
Read more about this topic: Comet Of 1729
Famous quotes containing the word orbit:
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—David Lehman (b. 1948)
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““To my thinking” boomed the Professor, begging the question as usual, “the greatest triumph of the human mind was the calculation of Neptune from the observed vagaries of the orbit of Uranus.”
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—Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)