Comet C/2019 B3 (PANSTARRS) reaches perihelion.

Comet C/2019 B3 (PANSTARRS) reached its perihelion (the closest point on its orbit to the Sun) at about 8.15 am GMT on Tuesday 19 January 2021, when it was approximately 6.82 AU from the Sun (i.e. 6.82 times as far from the Sun as the planet Earth, or 1 021 000 000 km). At this time the comet was 7.16 AU from the Earth, in the constellation of Octans (close to the South Pole and generally only visible from the Southern Hemisphere), having a magnitude of 18.28, making visible only with the most powerfull telescopes, if at all.

 

C/2019 B3 (PANSTARRS) imaged on 22 November 2020. Giuseppe Pappa/Seiichi Yoshida's Comet Page.

 

Comet C/2019 B3 (PANSTARRS) was discovered on 24 January 2019 by the University of Hawaii's PANSTARRS telescope. The name C/2019 B3 (PANSTARRS) implies that it is a comet (C/), that it was the third comet like body (comet 3) discovered in the second half of January 2019 (period 2019 B) and that it was discovered by the PANSTARRS telescope.

 

The orbit and current position of C/2019 B3 (PANSTARRS). The Sky Live.

C/2019 B3 (PANSTARRS) is a Parabolic Comet, which is to say a comet that was disrupted from an orbit in the Oort Cloud, and is passing through the Inner Solar System on a parabolic orbit that will probably not bring it back again. This parabolic trajectory tilted at an angle of 66.5° to the plain of the Solar System, that brought it in to 6.82 AU from the Sun at perihelion on 19 January 2021, between the orbits of the planets Jupiter and Saturn.

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