252P/LINEAR (2016)

Comet 252P/LINEAR is a periodic comet and near-Earth object discovered by the LINEAR survey on April 7, 2000. The comet is an Earth-Jupiter family comet, meaning that it passes quite close to both Earth and Jupiter. This causes its orbit to be perturbed frequently on an astronomical timescale.[1]
The comet was thrown into the near-Earth region by Jupiter in 1785, before which it had a perihelion near that of Mars (1774?1785). Prior to this, it had a perihelion in the asteroid belt (1607?1774) and even further before was most likely a Jupiter Trojan. Even though its Jupiter MOID is nearly 0.2 AU, Jupiter remains the primary factor in its orbital disruption.
At some point before 1860, 252P/LINEAR separated from a secondary, smaller fragment discovered in January of 2016, designated P/2016 BA14 (PANSTARRS).[2][3] The nucleus of the secondary is 60-200 meters wide, half that of the primary. 252P/LINEAR will get as close as 0.0356 AU (13.9 LD) to Earth on 21 March 2016 and P/2016 BA14 (PANSTARRS) will get as close as 0.0237 AU (9.2 LD) to Earth on 22 March 2016.[4]

252P/LINEAR Discovery
Discovered by Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR)
Discovery date 2000/04/07
Orbital characteristics A
Epoch 2015-Aug-01 (JD 2457235.5)
Observation arc 16 years
Aphelion 5.1079 AU
Perihelion 0.9961 AU
Semi-major axis 3.0520 AU
Eccentricity 0.6736
Orbital period 5.33 years (1947 days)
Inclination 10.4046°
TJupiter 2.8
Earth MOID 0.0138 AU
Jupiter MOID 0.1973 AU
Dimensions 100-400 meters
Comet total
magnitude (M1) 18.9 ± 1
Comet nuclear
magnitude (M2) 22.7 ± 0.9
Last perihelion 2010/11/13
Next perihelion 2016/03/21