A comet aphelion of 32 AU puts it about at the distance of Neptune, a = 30 AU.That would be Uranus rather than Neptune. The nominal semi-major axes are... 13P = 17 au; Uranus = 19 au; Neptune = 30 au. Of course, the difference between Uranus and Neptune is trivial compared to the distance to the Oort cloud.Yeah, that's an odd assertion. It gets about as far from the Sun as Neptune (although orbiting on a different plane).
A comet with a 70-year period isn't returning to the Oort cloud! (Wikipedia tells me that Olbers has an aphelion of 32 AU but the Oort cloud starts around 2000 AU out.)
BTW, a nice picture for today's APOD, as is typical of Horálek's work. I like that he avoided having the comet "growing" out of the tower's pinnacle. I was looking at 13P/Olbers yesterday evening, but visually with a 35x115 mm spotting scope under a hazy sky in the New Jersey Pines looking towards the Philadelphia light dome, it's just a vague smudge.
Statistics: Posted by Chris Peterson — Thu Aug 01, 2024 5:39 pm — Replies 7 — Views 333