re comet in temporary orbit around jupiter can these questions be answered for a previous instance such as the gehrels that was mentioned in an earlier posting orbital elements of comet vii from dance files p au e i cap omega w epoch thanks for the information i assume p is the semi major axis and e the eccentricity the peri helion and aphelion are then given by p e and p e i e about and au respectively for jupiter they are and au if was after the temporary capture this means that the comet ended up in an orbit that comes no closer than au to jupiter s which i take to be a rough indication of how far from jupiter it could get under jupiter s influence also perihelions of gehrels were april jupiter radii august jupiter radii where jupiter radius km mi au so the figure seems unlikely to actually be anything but a perijove is that the case for the figure as well mark brader softquad inc toronto remember the golgafrinchans utzoo sq msb msb sq com pete granger this article is in the public domain
