266P/Christensen

Last updated September 25, 2025

266P/Christensen
Discovery
Discovered by	Eric J. Christensen
Discovery date	October 27, 2006
Designations
Alternative designations	2006 U5
Orbital characteristics
Epoch	2020-04-21.0
Aphelion	4.736 AU
Perihelion	2.335 AU
Semi-major axis	3.535 AU
Eccentricity	0.339
Orbital period	6.65 a
Inclination	3.426°
Last perihelion	2020-04-19^[1]^[2] 2013-08-31
Next perihelion	2026-Dec-07 (JPL Horizons last obs 2020-04-16)

266P/Christensen is a periodic comet in the Solar System. It will next come to perihelion in December 2026. It has been suggested as the source of the 1977 "Wow! Signal".^[3]

References

↑ "266P/Christensen Orbit". Minor Planet Center . Retrieved 2017-06-08.
↑ Syuichi Nakano (2014-02-27). "266P/Christensen (NK 2619)". OAA Computing and Minor Planet Sections. Retrieved 2017-06-08.
↑ Paris, Antonio (Winter 2015). "Hydrogen Clouds from Comets 266/P Christensen and P/2008 Y2 (Gibbs) are Candidates for the Source of the 1977 "WOW" Signal" (PDF). Washington Academy of Sciences. Retrieved 7 June 2017.

External links

Orbital simulation from JPL (Java) / Horizons Ephemeris
266P on Seiichi Yoshida's comet list
Elements and Ephemeris for 266P/Christensen ^{[ permanent dead link ]} – Minor Planet Center

Numbered comets
Previous 265P/LINEAR	266P/Christensen	Next 267P/LONEOS

Comets

Features	Nucleus Coma Tails Antitail Comet dust Meteor shower
Types	Periodic Numbered Lost Long period Halley-type Jupiter-family Encke-type Main-belt Non-periodic Near-parabolic Hyperbolic Unknown-orbit Great Comet Sungrazing (Kreutz) Extinct Exocomet Interstellar Dark comet
Related	Naming of comets Observational history of comets Centaur Comet discoverers LINEAR Extraterrestrial atmosphere Oort cloud Small Solar System body Asteroid
Exploration	List of missions to comets List of comets visited by spacecraft
Latest	3I/ATLAS C/2025 F2 (SWAN) C/2024 S1 (ATLAS) C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) C/2023 P1 (Nishimura) C/2023 H2 (Lemmon) C/2023 E1 (ATLAS) C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS) C/2022 E3 (ZTF) C/2021 O3 (PanSTARRS) C/2021 J1 (Maury-Attard) C/2021 A1 (Leonard) C/2020 F8 (SWAN) C/2020 F5 (MASTER) C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS) C/2019 Y1 (ATLAS) C/2019 U6 (Lemmon) 2I/Borisov P/2019 LD2 (ATLAS) C/2018 Y1 (Iwamoto) C/2018 C2 (Lemmon) C/2017 U7 C/2017 K2 (PanSTARRS)
Culture and speculation	Antimatter comet Comets in fiction Comet vintages

Lists of comets (more)

Periodic
comets

Until 1985
(all)

After 1985
(notable)

Comet-like
asteroids

Lost

Recovered	9P/Tempel 11P/Tempel–Swift–LINEAR 15P/Finlay 17P/Holmes 27P/Crommelin 54P/de Vico–Swift–NEAT 55P/Tempel–Tuttle 57P/du Toit–Neujmin–Delporte 69P/Taylor 72P/Denning–Fujikawa 80P/Peters–Hartley 97P/Metcalf–Brewington 107P/Wilson–Harrington 113P/Spitaler 122P/de Vico 157P/Tritton 205P/Giacobini 206P/Barnard–Boattini 226P/Pigott–LINEAR–Kowalski 271P/van Houten–Lemmon 289P/Blanpain 489P/Denning
Destroyed	3D/Biela D/1993 F2 (Shoemaker–Levy 9)
Not found	D/1770 L1 (Lexell) 5D/Brorsen 18D/Perrine–Mrkos 20D/Westphal 25D/Neujmin 34D/Gale 75D/Kohoutek 83D/Russell 85D/Boethin D/1978 R1 (Haneda–Campos)

Visited by
spacecraft

Near-Parabolic
comets
(notable)

Until 1990	C/-43 K1 (Caesar's Comet) X/1106 C1 (Great Comet of 1106) C/1264 N1 (Great Comet of 1264) C/1402 D1 (Great Comet of 1402) C/1471 Y1 (Great Comet of 1472) C/1577 V1 (Great Comet of 1577) C/1652 Y1 C/1680 V1 (Great Comet of 1680, Kirsch's Comet, Newton's Comet)) C/1702 H1 (Comet of 1702) C/1729 P1 (Comet of 1729, Comet Sarabat) C/1739 K1 (Zanotti) C/1743 X1 (Great Comet of 1744, Comet Klinkenberg-Chéseaux) C/1760 A1 (Great Comet of 1760) C/1769 P1 (Great Comet of 1769) C/1807 R1 (Great Comet of 1807) C/1811 F1 (Great Comet of 1811) C/1819 N1 (Great Comet of 1819) C/1823 Y1 (Great Comet of 1823) C/1843 D1 (Great March Comet of 1843) C/1846 J1 (Brorsen) C/1847 T1 (Miss Mitchell's Comet) C/1852 K1 (Chacornac) C/1853 G1 (Schweizer) C/1858 L1 (Comet Donati) C/1861 G1 (Comet Thatcher) C/1861 J1 (Great Comet of 1861) C/1862 N1 (Schmidt) C/1864 N1 (Tempel) C/1865 B1 (Great Southern Comet of 1865) X/1872 X1 (Pogson's Comet) C/1874 H1 (Comet Coggia) C/1881 K1 (Comet Tebbutt) C/1882 R1 (Great Comet of 1882) C/1887 B1 (Great Southern Comet of 1887) C/1893 U1 (Brooks) C/1901 G1 (Great Comet of 1901) C/1907 G1 (Grigg–Mellish) C/1910 A1 (Great January Comet of 1910) C/1911 N1 (Kiess) C/1911 O1 (Brooks) C/1911 S3 (Beljawsky) C/1915 C1 (Mellish) C/1917 F1 (Mellish) C/1927 X1 (Skjellerup–Maristany) C/1931 P1 (Ryves) C/1936 O1 (Kaho–Kozik–Lis) C/1939 H1 (Jurlof–Achmarof–Hassel) C/1941 B2 (de Kock-Paraskevopoulos) C/1947 X1 (Southern Comet) C/1948 L1 (Honda–Bernasconi) C/1948 V1 (Eclipse) C/1956 R1 (Arend–Roland) C/1957 P1 (Mrkos) C/1961 O1 (Wilson-Hubbard) C/1961 R1 (Humason) C/1961 T1 (Seki) C/1962 C1 (Seki-Lines) C/1963 A1 (Ikeya) C/1963 R1 (Pereyra) C/1964 N1 (Ikeya) C/1965 S1 (Ikeya-Seki) C/1969 T1 (Tago-Sato-Kosaka) C/1969 Y1 (Bennett) C/1970 K1 (White–Ortiz–Bolelli) C/1973 E1 (Kohoutek) C/1975 T2 (Suzuki–Saigusa–Mori) C/1975 V1 (West) C/1979 Y1 (Bradfield) C/1980 E1 (Bowell) C/1983 H1 (IRAS–Araki–Alcock) C/1983 J1 (Sugano–Saigusa–Fujikawa) C/1989 W1 (Aarseth-Brewington) C/1989 X1 (Austin) C/1989 Y1 (Skorichenko–George)
After 1990	C/1990 K1 (Levy) C/1992 J1 (Spacewatch–Rabinowitz) C/1993 Y1 (McNaught–Russell) C/1995 O1 (Hale–Bopp) C/1996 B2 (Hyakutake) C/1997 L1 (Zhu–Balam) C/1998 H1 (Stonehouse) C/1998 J1 (SOHO) C/1999 F1 (Catalina) C/1999 S4 (LINEAR) C/2000 WM1 (LINEAR) C/2001 A2 (LINEAR) C/2001 OG108 (LONEOS) C/2001 Q4 (NEAT) C/2002 T7 (LINEAR) C/2002 V1 (NEAT) C/2004 F4 (Bradfield) C/2004 Q2 (Machholz) C/2006 A1 (Pojmański) C/2006 M4 (SWAN) C/2006 P1 (McNaught) C/2007 E2 (Lovejoy) C/2007 F1 (LONEOS) C/2007 N3 (Lulin) C/2007 Q3 (Siding Spring) C/2007 W1 (Boattini) C/2009 F6 (Yi–SWAN) C/2009 R1 (McNaught) C/2010 X1 (Elenin) C/2011 L4 (PANSTARRS) C/2011 W3 (Lovejoy) C/2012 E2 (SWAN) C/2012 F6 (Lemmon) C/2012 K1 (PANSTARRS) C/2012 S1 (ISON) C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring) C/2013 R1 (Lovejoy) C/2013 US10 (Catalina) C/2013 V5 (Oukaimeden) C/2014 E2 (Jacques) C/2014 Q1 (PanSTARRS) C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy) C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli–Bernstein) C/2015 ER61 (PanSTARRS) C/2015 V2 (Johnson) C/2017 K2 (PanSTARRS) 1I/2017 U1 ʻOumuamua C/2018 Y1 (Iwamoto) 2I/Borisov C/2019 U6 (Lemmon) C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS) C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) C/2020 F8 (SWAN) C/2021 A1 (Leonard) C/2022 E3 (ZTF) C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS) C/2023 P1 (Nishimura) C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) C/2024 S1 (ATLAS)
After 1910 (by name)	Aarseth-Brewington Arend–Roland ATLAS C/2019 Y4 C/2024 G3 C/2024 A1 3I Austin Beljawsky Bennett Bernardinelli–Bernstein Boattini Borisov Bowell Bradfield C/1979 Y1 C/2004 F4 Brooks Catalina C/1999 F1 C/2013 US10 de Kock–Paraskevopoulos Eclipse Elenin Hale-Bopp Honda–Bernasconi Humason Hyakutake Ikeya C/1963 A1 C/1964 N1 Ikeya-Seki IRAS–Araki–Alcock ISON Iwamoto Jacques Johnson Jurlof–Achmarof–Hassel Kaho–Kozik–Lis Kiess Kohoutek Lemmon C/2012 F6 C/2019 U6 Leonard Levy LINEAR C/1999 S4 C/2000 WM1 C/2001 A2 C/2002 T7 LONEOS C/2001 OG108 C/2007 F1 Lovejoy C/2007 E2 C/2011 W3 C/2013 R1 C/2014 Q2 Lulin Machholz McNaught C/2006 P1 C/2009 R1 McNaught–Russell John E. Mellish C/1915 C1 C/1917 F1 Mrkos NEAT C/2001 Q4 C/2002 V1 NEOWISE Nishimura Oukaimeden ʻOumuamua Pan-STARRS C/2011 L4 C/2012 K1 311P/PanSTARRS C/2014 Q1 C/2015 ER61 C/2017 K2 Pereyra Pojmański Ryves Seki Seki–Lines Siding Spring C/2007 Q3 C/2013 A1 Skjellerup–Maristany Skorichenko–George SOHO Southern Spacewatch–Rabinowitz Stonehouse Sugano–Saigusa–Fujikawa Suzuki–Saigusa–Mori SWAN C/2006 M4 C/2012 E2 C/2020 F8 Tago-Sato-Kosaka Tsuchinshan–ATLAS West White–Ortiz–Bolelli Wilson–Hubbard Yi–SWAN Zhu–Balam ZTF

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