Yes, the comet came from south of the ecliptic, crossed to the north at the ascending node, whipped around the Sun, and dropped back south at the descending node... both of those nodes inside the orbit of Mercury.Had to look up the meaning of "node". From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_node. I presume the unlabeled opposite point where the orbit intersects the "plane of reference" (the ecliptic in Chris' usage?) is called the descending node, with the direction of the orbital path being from below the plane to above in this image:
No, it doesn't have an Earth-crossing orbit. Its orbit is extremely inclined with both nodes inside the orbit of Mercury. Additionally, its orbit is hyperbolic, so whatever is left of it (and its debris stream, which is pretty much in the same orbit) won't be back. So no meteors from this object.
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Screenshot 2025-02-05 093309.png
Statistics: Posted by johnnydeep — Wed Feb 05, 2025 4:38 pm — Replies 5 — Views 159