C/1955 O1 (Honda) is a non-periodic comet that made its closest approach to Earth on 18 August 1955, at a distance of . It is one of several comets discovered by Japanese astronomer, Minoru Honda.
Observational history Discovery Minoru Honda found his seventh comet overall on the night of 29 July 1955, as a diffuse 8th-magnitude object within the constellation Orion.
Follow-up observations The comet barely reached naked eye visibility starting on 24 August 1955. By September 1955, it reached peak brightness at magnitude 5.0, believed to be caused by a large outburst that was initially thought to be the comet's fragmentation/splitting event.
It was last seen by Max Beyer on 20 November 1955, as a 13th-magnitude object within the constellation Hercules. Elizabeth Roemer and Hamilton Jeffers attempted to recover the comet from the Lick Observatory between February and March 1956 but failed to locate it.
Orbit A 2022 study calculated that C/1955 O1 has a minimum orbit intersection distance of around with 50000 Quaoar.
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