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210P/Christensen
Jupiter family comet From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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210P/Christensen is a Jupiter family periodic comet with an orbital period of 5.7 years. It was discovered by Eric J. Christensen on 26 May 2003 in images taken by the Catalina Sky Survey[1] and recovered in images obtained by STEREO, the first time a single-apparition comet was recovered by a spacecraft.[5]
Eric J. Christensen discovered the comet on 26 May 2003 in images taken with the 0.7-m Schmidt telescope of the Catalina Sky Survey. The comet had an estimated magnitude of 14.6 and a coma with an estimated diameter between 10 and 35 arcseconds and a faint tail.[1] Further observations revealed the comet had a short orbital period.[6]
In mid December 2008, Australian comet-hunter Alan Watson spotted in the STEREO/SECCHI Heliospheric Imager ("HI") HI-1B data a cometary object. Veteran German comet hunter Rainer Kracht recorded a few positions of the comet in the data and produced a set of very approximate orbital elements for it.[5] Maik Meyer noticed the similarity of these orbital elements to those of P/2003 K2 and the link was confirmed by Brian Marsden.[5][7] This was the first recovery by a spacecraft of a single-apparition comet (a comet that had only been observed to pass the Sun once) by a spacecraft.[5] The comet was observed from the ground on 31 November 2008, with an estimated magnitude of 11.[8]
The comet has been locked in a 2:1 orbital resonance with Jupiter for the last 10,000 years and could be of asteroidal origin.[4]
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