Period
With a nearly parabolic trajectory, estimates for the orbital period of this comet have varied from 254,000 to 558,000 years, and even as high as 6.5 million years. Computing the best-fit orbit for this long-period comet is made more difficult since it underwent a splitting event which may have caused a non-gravitational perturbation of the orbit. The 2008 SAO Catalog of Cometary Orbits shows 195 observations for C/1975 V1 and 135 for C/1975 V1-A, for a combined total of 330 (218 observations were used in the fit). Comet C/1999 F1 has a similar period.
Read more about this topic: Comet West
Famous quotes containing the word period:
“There is a period near the beginning of every man’s life when he has little to cling to except his unmanageable dream, little to support him except good health, and nowhere to go but all over the place.”
—E.B. (Elwyn Brooks)
“Of all the barbarous middle ages, that
Which is most barbarous is the middle age
Of man! it is—I really scarce know what;
But when we hover between fool and sage,
And don’t know justly what we would be at—
A period something like a printed page,
Black letter upon foolscap, while our hair
Grows grizzled, and we are not what we were.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“The easiest period in a crisis situation is actually the battle itself. The most difficult is the period of indecision—whether to fight or run away. And the most dangerous period is the aftermath. It is then, with all his resources spent and his guard down, that an individual must watch out for dulled reactions and faulty judgment.”
—Richard M. Nixon (1913–1995)