P/2015 X6 (PANSTARRS)

COMETEncke-type comet

ILLUSTRATION FROM PERIHELION 2.29 AU · ECCENTRICITY 0.170

[

OVERVIEW

] COMET

P/2015 X6 (PANSTARRS) is an Encke-type comet. It orbits the Sun at a mean distance of 2.755 .

WHAT IT IS
Encke-type comet
HOW FAR
2.755

Its average distance from the Sun, not from Earth.

ONE ORBIT TAKES
4.57

One trip round the Sun.

[

OBSERVING

] FROM WHERE YOU ARE

What it takes to see P/2015 X6 (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
4.572 ±0.27
Eccentricity
Inclination
4.56
Longitude of ascending node
107.11
Argument of perihelion
329.02 ±0.015
Mean anomaly
341.11
Element epoch
2457378.5000
Perihelion passage
2457466.1400
Minimum distance from Earth's orbit
1.3
Orbit class
ETc

WHEN IT WAS FOUND

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

First observed
2015-11-12
[

ALSO KNOWN AS

] 2 DESIGNATIONS
  • Comet 2015 X6
  • Comet P/2015 X6 (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. P/2015 X6 (PANSTARRS) [catalogue entry]. Data release DR1 (2026-08-21). https://spacecatalog.org/object/p-2015-x6-panstarrs
BIBTEX
@misc{spacecatalog_p-2015-x6-panstarrs,
  author       = {{SpaceCatalog}},
  title        = {{P/2015 X6 (PANSTARRS)}},
  howpublished = {SpaceCatalog, data release DR1 (2026-08-21)},
  year         = {2026},
  url          = {https://spacecatalog.org/object/p-2015-x6-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