C/2002 V1 (NEAT)

Observations

Comet NEAT was discovered from the 1.2 m Schmidt telescope of the Haleakalā Observatory as a magnitude-17 object on 6 November 2002 on the course of the Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) survey. The comet became visible in the naked eye by January 2003.

The comet was hit by a coronal mass ejection during its perihelion on 18 February 2003, where it was only 5.7 degrees from the Sun from Earth's perspective. Speculation that the CME was caused by the comet's close approach was dismissed by scientists; comets and CMEs occur close together in time only by coincidence, and there were 56 CMEs recorded in February 2003. C/2002 V1 (NEAT) appeared impressive as viewed by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) as a result of the forward scattering of light off of the dust in the coma and tail. The comet remained observable with telescopes until October 2003.

The orbit of a long-period comet is properly obtained when the osculating orbit is computed at an epoch after leaving the planetary region and is calculated with respect to the center of mass of the Solar System. Using JPL Horizons, the barycentric orbital elements for epoch 2020-Jan-01 generate a semi-major axis of 1,100 AU, an apoapsis distance of 2,230 AU, and a period of approximately 37,000 years.

References

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| access-date= 5 December 2024 | archive-date= 4 April 2004 | archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20040404112347/http://www.space.com/spacewatch/comet_neat_030131.html | url-status= dead

| access-date= 5 August 2008 | archive-date= 5 June 2003 | archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20030605075757/http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/neat_soho_030218.html | url-status= dead

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| archive-date= 5 October 2011 | archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20111005215531/http://sungrazer.nrl.navy.mil/index.php?p=news/comets_cmes | url-status= live | access-date= 17 April 2025