Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 the Sun, unlike all other comets known at the time. Its orbit around Jupiter was very loosely bound, with a period of about 2 years and an apoapsis (the point in the orbit farthest from the planet) of . Its orbit around the planet was highly eccentric ("e" = 0.9986). Tracing back the comet's orbital motion revealed that it had been orbiting Jupiter for some time. It is likely that it was captured from a solar orbit in the early 1970s, although the capture may have occurred as early as the mid-1960s. Several other observers found images of the comet
Erich Meyer Erich Meyer Erich Meyer (born August 6, 1951) is an Austrian engineer, amateur astronomer and discoverer of asteroids. Between 1996 and 1999, using the private observatory Meyer/Obermair in Davidschlag (municipality Kirchschlag bei Linz, Austria), he discovered a total of 21 asteroids. Seven of these asteroids were discovered together with his colleague Erwin Obermair and one together with Herbert Raab. Furthermore, he was involved in six other discoveries of asteroids between 1996 and 2005, which were assigned as site discoveries to the observatory Davidschlag by the International Astronomical Union. Meyer's most important observations include precisie astrometry of the comet Shoemaker–Levy 9,