16P/Brooks

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Periodic comet with 6 year orbit

title: "16P/Brooks" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["periodic-comets", "jupiter-family-comets", "numbered-comets", "comets-in-2014", "split-comets", "astronomical-objects-discovered-in-1889"] description: "Periodic comet with 6 year orbit" topic_path: "general/periodic-comets" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16P/Brooks" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Periodic comet with 6 year orbit ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox comet"]

Field	Value
name	16P/Brooks
image	Le ciel 1923 (150610345) - comet Brooks.jpg
caption	Sketch of 16P/Brooks's fragmentation on 4 August 1889
discoverer	William Robert Brooks
discovery_date	7 July 1889
designations	1889 V; 1896 VI; 1903 V;
1911 I; 1925 IX; 1932 VIII;
1939 VII; 1946 IV; 1953 V;
1960 VI; 1974 I; 1980 IX;
1987 XXIV; 1994 XXIII
epoch	2023-02-25
semimajor	3.659 AU
perihelion	1.879 AU
aphelion	5.439 AU
eccentricity	0.4864
period	6.99 yr
inclination	3.011°
max_speed	40 km/s (1886 Jupiter approach)
26 km/s (2028 perihelion)
last_p	April 18, 2021
June 7, 2014
April 12, 2008
next_p	2028-Apr-21
::

16P/Brooks, also known as Brooks 2, is a periodic comet discovered by William Robert Brooks on 7 July 1889, but failed to note any motion. He was able to confirm the discovery the next morning, having seen that the comet had moved north. On 1 August 1889, the famous comet hunter Edward Emerson Barnard discovered two fragments of the comet labeled "B" and "C" located 1 and 4.5 arc minutes away. On 2 August he found another four or five, but these were no longer visible the next day. On August 4, he observed two more objects, labeled "D" and "E". "E" disappeared by the next night and "D" was gone by the next week. Around mid-month, "B" grew large and faint, finally disappearing at the beginning of September. "C" managed to survive until mid-November 1889. The apparition ended on 13 January 1891. After the discovery apparition, the comet has always been over two magnitudes fainter.

1886

The comet's breakup is believed to have been caused by the passage of the comet within Jupiter's Roche limit around 20 July 1886, when it spent two days within the orbit of Io.

::data[format=table title="16P/Brooks 2 [[Curve fitting|best-fit]] Jupiter approach around 1886-Jul-20"] | Date & time of closest approach | Jupiter distance (AU) | Sun distance (AU) | Velocity wrt Jupiter (km/s) | Velocity wrt Sun (km/s) | Reference | |---|---|---|---|---|---| | 1886-Jul-20 22:32 | 0.001 AU | 5.457 AU | 41.1 | 40.1 | Horizons | ::

The very close approach to Jupiter in 1886 resulted in the previous perihelion distance becoming the new aphelion distance.

::data[format=table title="Orbital Elements for 1865 + 1889"] | Epoch | Aphelion (AD) | Perihelion (QR) | Period | |---|---|---|---| | 1865 | 14 AU | 5.5 AU | 31 years | | 1889 | 5.4 AU | 1.95 AU | 7 years | ::

On 31 December 2016 the comet passed 0.333 AU from Jupiter and on 5 July 2053 ± 3 days it will pass about 0.26 AU from Jupiter.

Notes

References

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::