C/2006 S3 (LONEOS)

C/2006 S3 is a distant hyperbolic comet that made its last perihelion on 16 April 2012. It is one of 18 comets discovered by the Lowell Observatory Near-Earth-Object Search program.

Observational history

Discovery

On 19 September 2006, the comet was discovered as a 19th-magnitude object from CCD images taken by Georgi Mandushev as part of the Lowell Observatory's LONEOS program. The observatory's telescope revealed a moderately condensed coma about 11 arcseconds in diameter, which was slightly asymmetrical towards the east. Precovery images showed that the Catalina Sky Survey had observed the comet about two days prior on 17 September, allowing the first orbital calculations to be published.
At the time of discovery, the comet was around from the Sun, at that time the greatest distance of any known comet with detectable activity. Precovery observations from 1999 showed that it even produced cometary activity at a distance of ! These records were later surpassed by both C/2010 U3 (Boattini) and (Bernardinelli–Bernstein) in the following years.