C/2001 A2-B (LINEAR)

COMETComet

ILLUSTRATION FROM PERIHELION 0.779 AU · ECCENTRICITY 0.999

[

OVERVIEW

] COMET

C/2001 A2-B (LINEAR) is a comet. It orbits the Sun at a mean distance of 1119 .

WHAT IT IS
Comet
HOW FAR
1119

Its average distance from the Sun, not from Earth.

ONE ORBIT TAKES
37 500

One trip round the Sun.

[

OBSERVING

] FROM WHERE YOU ARE

What it takes to see C/2001 A2-B (LINEAR) for yourself. Everything in this part of the page is worked out for a real horizon, a real night and the equipment you say you have.

[

CATALOG DATA

] 11 FIELDS

The raw catalogue values, as the source published them, with the error bars where one was published — sorted by what each set of figures is about rather than by the order they happened to be stored in.

THE ORBIT

The shape of the path, where the object sits on it, and the instant those figures were true of. An orbit is a fit to observations and drifts away from the real one either side of its epoch.

Orbital period
37 510 ±64000
Eccentricity
Inclination
36.48
Longitude of ascending node
295.12
Argument of perihelion
295.33
Mean anomaly
0
Element epoch
2452095.5000
Perihelion passage
2452054.0200
Minimum distance from Earth's orbit
0.0511
Orbit class
COM

WHEN IT WAS FOUND

Who first saw it, from where, and by what method.

First observed
2001-01-03
[

ALSO KNOWN AS

] 2 DESIGNATIONS
  • Comet 2001 A2-B
  • Comet C/2001 A2-B (LINEAR)
[

CITE THIS PAGE

] DR1

This page is live and its numbers move when an upstream refreshes, so the citation names the release the rows belong to rather than the day you read them. The release itself is frozen, republished as a bundle, and is what a data-availability statement should point at.

PLAIN TEXT
SpaceCatalog. C/2001 A2-B (LINEAR) [catalogue entry]. Data release DR1 (2026-08-21). https://spacecatalog.org/object/c-2001-a2-b-linear
BIBTEX
@misc{spacecatalog_c-2001-a2-b-linear,
  author       = {{SpaceCatalog}},
  title        = {{C/2001 A2-B (LINEAR)}},
  howpublished = {SpaceCatalog, data release DR1 (2026-08-21)},
  year         = {2026},
  url          = {https://spacecatalog.org/object/c-2001-a2-b-linear},
  note         = {Catalogue entry, data release DR1 (2026-08-21). Values from JPL Small-Body Database.}
}

The values above were taken from JPL Small-Body Database — Public domain (NASA/JPL). Citing this page does not replace citing that catalogue.

[

RELATED OBJECTS

] 8 LINKED