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C/2025 D1 (Gröller)
Parabolic comet From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Comet Gröller, also known as C/2025 D1 (Gröller), is a very distant non-periodic comet discovered by Hannes Gröller of the Catalina Sky Survey on 20 February 2025. It is the comet with the most distant perihelion ever known,[4] which will approach the Sun no closer than 14.12 AU (2.112 billion km) by May 2028,[2] surpassing the record previously held by C/2003 A2 (Gleason) by 2.7 AU.[4][5]
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Observational history
The comet was discovered by Hannes Gröller using the 2.25 m (7.4 ft) Bok Telescope of the Kitt Peak Observatory in Arizona.[1] Images obtained through stacking of 30-second exposures show a magnitude 20.6 object with a condensed coma measuring 3 arcseconds across.[6][7] Amateur astronomer Sam Deen found several precovery observations of C/2025 D1 from 2018, when the comet was more than 21 AU (3.1 billion km) from the Sun (beyond the orbit of Uranus).[4] This makes C/2025 D1 one of the few known "ultradistant comets" that have been observed beyond 20 AU (3.0 billion km) from the Sun.[4] The ultradistant comets, which include the giant Oort cloud comet C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli–Bernstein), are believed to contain supervolatile compounds such as carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide, which are known to easily vaporize at low temperatures far from the Sun.[4]
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Orbit
Astrometric measurements and orbital calculations reveal that C/2025 D1 is a dynamically new comet from the Oort cloud, with its previous perihelion distance approximately 6 million years ago were estimated to be greater than or equal to 60 AU (9.0 billion km).[3] It will reach its next perihelion on 18 May 2028,[2] and is expected to be ejected from the Solar System on its outbound flight.[3]
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See also
Other ultradistant comets:
References
External links
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