C/2023 Q2 (PANSTARRS)

COMETComet

ILLUSTRATION FROM PERIHELION 3.21 AU · ECCENTRICITY 0.991

[

OVERVIEW

] COMET

C/2023 Q2 (PANSTARRS) is a comet. It orbits the Sun at a mean distance of 339.2 .

WHAT IT IS
Comet
HOW FAR
339.2

Its average distance from the Sun, not from Earth.

ONE ORBIT TAKES
6240

One trip round the Sun.

[

OBSERVING

] FROM WHERE YOU ARE

What it takes to see C/2023 Q2 (PANSTARRS) 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
6242 ±10000
Eccentricity
Inclination
104.05
Longitude of ascending node
92.68
Argument of perihelion
171.73
Mean anomaly
359.96
Element epoch
2460220.5000
Perihelion passage
2460485.6000
Minimum distance from Earth's orbit
2.2
Orbit class
COM

WHEN IT WAS FOUND

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

First observed
2023-07-06
[

ALSO KNOWN AS

] 2 DESIGNATIONS
  • Comet 2023 Q2
  • Comet C/2023 Q2 (PANSTARRS)
[

LOOK IT UP ELSEWHERE

] 1 SERVICE

Each link carries the identifier printed beside it. Nothing on this page is a measurement of our own, so a number that disagrees with one of these is worth reporting — and a service that has never catalogued this object under this name will say so plainly.

[

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/2023 Q2 (PANSTARRS) [catalogue entry]. Data release DR1 (2026-08-21). https://spacecatalog.org/object/c-2023-q2-panstarrs
BIBTEX
@misc{spacecatalog_c-2023-q2-panstarrs,
  author       = {{SpaceCatalog}},
  title        = {{C/2023 Q2 (PANSTARRS)}},
  howpublished = {SpaceCatalog, data release DR1 (2026-08-21)},
  year         = {2026},
  url          = {https://spacecatalog.org/object/c-2023-q2-panstarrs},
  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