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On December 16, 2000, the Lincoln Laboratory Near-Earth Asteroid Research team's
automated 1-meter reflector in New Mexico swept up an apparent asteroid in Cassiopeia (among hundreds of solar-system
objects it detected that night). Although only magnitude 18 at the time, the object's unusual motion caught the
attention of astronomers at the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massichusetts. After receiving positions for a few
more nights, they managed to link the object with a separate set of
LINEAR
observations dating from mid-November.
But it was not until Timothy B. Spahr (Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory) imaged the object with the 1.2 meter
reflector on Mount Hopkins, Arizona, that its true nature became apparent. His image revealed a tiny, 10" coma -
and, even more telling, a short, broad tail pointing to the northeast. The newcomer was obviously a
comet. Brian G.
Marsden's first orbit calculation indicated that this
Comet
LINEAR, C/2000 WM, was still very remote from the Sun
(beyond Jupiter's orbit). But more than a year hence, on January 22, 2002, it would pass just 0.55 astronomical unit
(82 million kilometers) from our star. A few weeks before that the
comet
would swing to within just 0.31 a.u. of Earth.
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