C/1959 Y1 Burnham
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Comet C/1959 Y1 was discovered on 30 December 1959 by Robert Burnham Jr (Lowell Observatory, Arizona, USA), that is 5 months before its perihelion passage. It was observed until 13 July 1960 [Kronk, Cometography: Volume 4].
Comet had its closest approach to the Earth on 27 April 1960 (0.203 au), 12 days after its perihelion passage.
This is a comet with nongravitational effects strongly manifested in positional data fitting.
Both solutions (GR and NG) given here are based on data spanning over 0.449 yr in a range of heliocentric distances: 1.63 au – 0.504 au (perihelion) – 1.81 au.
This Oort spike comet suffers moderate planetary perturbations during its passage through the planetary system; these perturbations lead to escape the comet from the planetary zone on a hyperbolic orbit (see future barycentric orbits).
See also Królikowska 2014 and Królikowska 2020.

solution description
number of observations 79
data interval 1960 01 04 – 1960 06 17
data type perihelion within the observation arc (FULL)
data arc selection entire data set (STD)
range of heliocentric distances 1.63 au – 0.50 au (perihelion) – 1.81 au
type of model of motion NT - non-gravitational orbits for asymmetric, standard g(r)
data weighting NO
number of residuals 146
RMS [arcseconds] 1.60
orbit quality class 2b
orbital elements (barycentric ecliptic J2000)
Epoch 2254 05 05
perihelion date 1960 03 21.17419271 ± 0.00046943
perihelion distance [au] 0.49958552 ± 0.00001211
eccentricity 1.00014320 ± 0.00001679
argument of perihelion [°] 306.600044 ± 0.002241
ascending node [°] 252.749756 ± 0.000630
inclination [°] 159.604537 ± 0.000206
reciprocal semi-major axis [10-6 au-1] -286.64 ± 33.59
file containing 5001 VCs swarm
1959y1n2.bpl
Upper panel: Time distribution of positional observations with corresponding heliocentric (red curve) and geocentric (green curve) distance at which they were taken. The horizontal dotted line shows the perihelion distance for a given comet whereas vertical dotted line — the moment of perihelion passage.
Lower panel (panels): O-C diagram for this(two) solution (solutions) given in this database, where residuals in right ascension are shown using magenta dots and in declination by blue open circles.
Six 2D-projections of the 6D space of future swarm including 5001 VCs. Each density map is given in logarithmic scale presented on the right in the individual panel.