Copyright © 1996 by C.-I. Lagerkvist (Uppsala Observatory, Sweden)

      Claes-Ingvar Lagerkvist (Uppsala Observatory, Sweden) discovered this comet on a 1.54-m Schmidt plate taken at the European Southern Observatory on 1996 September 10.1. It was then situated within Aquarius and Lagerkvist estimated the total magnitude as 17. Observations by U. Carsenty and S. Mottola using the ESO Bochum telescope on September 11 and 12 confirmed the comet and revealed a coma and a tail. The comet was moving slowly southwestwards.

• A preliminary orbit computed by Daniel W. E. Green (Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams) on September 14 revealed the comet was moving in a short-period orbit of nearly 7.8 years.
• An orbit computed by Kenji Muraoka during February 1997 used 112 positions accumulated from 1996 September 11 to December 30 and indicated the orbital period is 7.358 years. Gary W. Kronk finds this orbit indicates the comet passed about 0.5 AU from Jupiter during May 1993.
• The comet passed closest to Earth on 1996 September 5 (1.7256 AU) and then passed perihelion on 1997 January 19 (2.6096 AU). The comet attained its maximum brightness near the end of 1996 (magnitude 16.5) and was expected to fade as it moved away from both the sun and Earth.