Discovery of 11P/Tempel–Swift–LINEAR

Comet 11P/Tempel–Swift–LINEAR is a periodic comet of the Jupiter family which orbits the Sun about every six and a half years. It was discovered by the German-French astronomer Wilhelm Tempel, who spotted it from Marseille, and was seen again in the nineteenth century by the American Lewis Swift. After that it was lost for more than a century, as its orbit was altered by close encounters with Jupiter and it became too faint to see, until it was recovered by the LINEAR survey, an automated search for near-Earth objects in New Mexico. Its triple name thus reflects the three discovery events. It is a faint comet that is seen only with a telescope.

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