The latest orbital elements suggest that the comet is currently traveling on an orbital path with an eccentricity of 1.00027, or in other words, a parabolic orbit. Such an orbit is not closed ...

As Canadian comet hunter David Levy once quipped ... The shape of an object’s orbit is specified by a characteristic called its eccentricity, or deviation from a circle.

The comet’s orbit has a high eccentricity. If the comet is bound, it will take millions of years to go around the Sun. But there is a chance that the comet is no longer bound to the Solar System.

A perfect circle has an eccentricity of 0, while hyperbolic comet orbits have an eccentricity greater than 1 — a shape called a hyperbola.

Content continues below With an eccentricity greater than 1, that means the comet is no longer bound to the Sun. It is following an 'escape trajectory' — one that's either parabolic or ...

AN orbit for Comet Oterma, 1943a, has been computed, and its eccentricity is only a little more than half that of Pluto. As a result of this small eccentricity, it will be possible to observe the ...