P/2008 T1 (Boattini): Another comet under transition from Saturn to Jupiter

摘要

The newly discovered periodic comet P/2008 T1 (Boattini) is found to have experienced a recent capture into its present orbit, following a close approach to Saturn in 1995 to within 0.17 AU. This orbital change transferred the comet into an orbit tangent to that of Jupiter, which lead to an even closer passage within 0.02 AU with that planet in 2003 decoupling it from the influence of Saturn (© 2010 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)