50P/Arend
solar system comet
Comet Arend or 50P/Arend is a periodic comet in the Solar System which was discovered on October 4, 1951. It was discovered by astronomer Sylvain Julien Victor Arend at the Royal Observatory of Belgium located in the municipality of Uccle. The comet was illustrated at approximately a magnitude of 14 and also exhibited a nucleus within a coma 14 arc seconds across. It has been observed on its every subsequent apparition since discovery, with the most recent one occurred in 2024. The comet's next perihelion will be in the year 2032.
Observations
50P/Arend was observed at its brightest at a maximum magnitude of 14 when it was discovered in 1951. At the comet's next apparition on September 1, 1959, did not exceed 17 if it had not been for an outburst in November which affected its brightness to magnitude 15.5. The observed orbital period was 7.8 years at the time of its discovery however at each succeeding perihelion has led to less favorable observations due to its 0.64 astronomical units (AU) as it approached Jupiter in 1969, even if its maximum magnitude was 15. This approach also led to the comet's orbital period to increase to 8.0 years.
Long-term motion studies conducted by Brian G. Marsden on the comet 50P/Arend renders the comet's orbital eccentricity at 0.5 which makes it relatively undisturbed by Jupiter over the last 200-year cycles despite as passage of only 0.49 AU. The study was conducted inside the interval where libration happens.
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This entry incorporates text from “50P/Arend” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.