C/2002 V1 (NEAT)

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**C/2002 V1**
Discovery
Discovered by:	NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, announced by S.H. Pravdo, Named after NEAT Observatory in Hawaii
Discovery date:	November 6, 2002
Alternate designations:	C/2002 V1, 2002 V1, Comet NEAT
Orbital characteristics ^A
Epoch:	2452634.5 (December 26, 2002)
Aphelion distance:	2020.81702178 AU
Perihelion distance:	0.0992586594482068 AU
Semi-major axis:	1010.45814021884 AU
Eccentricity:	0.999901768657703
Orbital period:	32120.7511 a
Inclination:	81.7060027382674°
Last perihelion:	February 18, 2003
Next perihelion:	34122 AD [1]

Comet C/2002 V1 (NEAT) is a non-periodic comet that appeared in November, 2002. The comet appeared with a magnitude of approximately –0.5, making it currently the 7th brightest comet seen in 70 years.^[1] It was seen by SOHO in February 2003. It was calculated that the comet came closer to the sun than the Asteroid belt in September 2002. Slight controversy arose when the comet failed to break up when it approached the sun, as expected by some scientists if it were a small comet.^{[citation needed]} When the comet was hit by a Coronal mass ejection, some people rumored that the comet had "disturbed" the sun, although most scientists said it was unrelated. Further rumors were spread when the comet's image showed up in two different places on the LASCO SOHO images, and when an image showed up after a CCD bakeout on February 23, it was rumored to be the comet being expelled from the sun, although the orbits would have taken the comet out of SOHO's view. Some people even rumoured that the comet was the returning Nibiru, as it was predicted by some conspiracists to appear in May of 2003.