C/2010 X1 (Elenin)
Comet C/2010 X1 (Elenin) is an Oort cloud comet discovered by Russian amateur astronomer Leonid Elenin on December 10, 2010, through remote control of the International Scientific Optical Network's robotic observatory near Mayhill in the U.S. state of New Mexico. The discovery was made using the automated asteroids discovery program CoLiTec. At the time of discovery, the comet had an apparent magnitude of 19.5, which made it about 150,000 times fainter than can be seen with the naked eye. The discoverer, Leonid Elenin, originally estimated that the comet nucleus was 3–4 km in diameter, but more recent estimates place the pre-breakup size of the comet at 2 km. Comet Elenin started disintegrating in August 2011, and as of mid-October 2011 was not visible even using large ground-based telescopes.
Comet Elenin as seen by the STEREO-B spacecraft on August 1st, 2011. | |
| Discovery | |
|---|---|
| Discovered by | Leonid Elenin 0.45-m reflector (H15) |
| Discovery date | December 10, 2010 |
| Orbital characteristics | |
| Epoch | March 31, 2011 (JD 2455651.5) |
| Orbit type | Oort cloud |
| Aphelion | ~97,000 AU (1.5 ly) (inbound) |
| Perihelion | 0.48242 AU |
| Semi-major axis | ~48000 AU (inbound) |
| Eccentricity | 1.000067 (heliocentric) 0.999990 (inbound) |
| Orbital period | millions of years (inbound) |
| Inclination | 1.8396° |
| Last perihelion | 10 September 2011 |
| Next perihelion | unknown/disintegrated |