Discovery of C/2010 X1 (Elenin)

Comet C/2010 X1 (Elenin) was discovered by the Russian amateur astronomer Leonid Elenin, who found it on images taken with a remote telescope of the International Scientific Optical Network in New Mexico. It drew public attention in 2011 as it approached the Sun, when claims on the internet linked it, without any scientific basis, to doomsday predictions. Astronomers knew it would stay far from Earth, at a distance of tens of millions of kilometres. The comet began to disintegrate in the summer of 2011, before its closest approach to the Sun, and by the autumn it had faded into a cloud of debris too faint to see, a reminder that small comets are fragile.

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