C/2023 V5 (Leonard)

For other comets discovered by Gregory J. Leonard, see Comet Leonard (disambiguation).

C/2023 V5 (Leonard) was discovered on 6 November 2023 by the Catalina Sky Survey. It came to perihelion on 13 December 2023 at 0.849 AU (127.0 million km), from the Sun.^[3][4] It is probably a Liller family comet, together with C/1988 A1 (Liller), C/1996 Q1 (Tabur), C/2015 F3 (SWAN), and C/2019 Y1 (ATLAS).^[5][6]

C/2023 V5 (Leonard)

Discovery
Discovered by	Greg J. Leonard
Discovery date	6 November 2023
Orbital characteristics
Epoch	2023-Nov-07
Observation arc	9 days
Number of observations	148
Orbit type	hyperbolic[1][2]
Perihelion	0.846 AU[1]
Eccentricity	1.008[1]
Inclination	73.6°
Longitude of ascending node	31.52°
Argument of periapsis	57.0°
Last perihelion	13 December 2023
Earth MOID	0.089 AU[1]
Jupiter MOID	0.915 AU
Comet total magnitude (M1)	21.4

Orbit

JPL Horizons shows both an inbound and outbound eccentricity greater than 1.^[2]

Comet C/2023 V5 is probably a secondary fragment of one of the primary fragments of C/1988 A1 (Liller).^[6]