C/2002 Q3-A (LINEAR)

COMETComet

ILLUSTRATION FROM PERIHELION 1.3 AU · ECCENTRICITY 0.994

[

OVERVIEW

] COMET

C/2002 Q3-A (LINEAR) is a comet. It orbits the Sun at a mean distance of 233.9 .

WHAT IT IS: Comet
HOW FAR: 233.9
ONE ORBIT TAKES: 3590

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OBSERVING

] FROM WHERE YOU ARE

What it takes to see C/2002 Q3-A (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.

WHERE IT IS NOW

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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: 3587 ±1.2×10⁷
Eccentricity: ±0.033
Inclination: 96.86 ±0.19
Longitude of ascending node: 154.19 ±0.2
Argument of perihelion: 125.7 ±0.41
Mean anomaly: 0.01
Element epoch: 2452526.5000
Perihelion passage: 2452505.4800
Minimum distance from Earth's orbit: 0.553
Orbit class: COM

WHEN IT WAS FOUND

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

First observed: 2002-09-04

[

ALSO KNOWN AS

] 2 DESIGNATIONS

Comet 2002 Q3-A
Comet C/2002 Q3-A (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/2002 Q3-A (LINEAR) [catalogue entry]. Data release DR1 (2026-08-21). https://spacecatalog.org/object/c-2002-q3-a-linear

BIBTEX

@misc{spacecatalog_c-2002-q3-a-linear,
  author       = {{SpaceCatalog}},
  title        = {{C/2002 Q3-A (LINEAR)}},
  howpublished = {SpaceCatalog, data release DR1 (2026-08-21)},
  year         = {2026},
  url          = {https://spacecatalog.org/object/c-2002-q3-a-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.

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