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The tail of a comet points toward the direction of the Sun as it is moving through space based on the laws of refraction. The comet’s tail is composed of an air-like element that is transparent as it is seen in space but only when it is faced away from the Sun. The visibility of the tail is explained by solar rays reflecting off of the tail.
Comets whose aphelia are near a major planet's orbit are called its "family". [81] Such families are thought to arise from the planet capturing formerly long-period comets into shorter orbits. [82] At the shorter orbital period extreme, Encke's Comet has an orbit that does not reach the orbit of Jupiter, and is known as an Encke-type comet.
Halley's Comet is the only known short-period comet that is consistently visible to the naked eye from Earth, [16] appearing every 72–80 years, [17] though with the majority of recorded apparations (25 of 30) occurring after 75–77 years.
The approach of Comet Tsuchinshan–ATLAS has particularly excited astronomers because it is a long-period comet, meaning the comet takes more than 200 years — or 80,000 years in this case ...
The following list is of comets with very long orbital periods, defined as between 200 and 1000 years.These comets come from the Kuiper belt and scattered disk, beyond the orbit of Pluto, with possible origins in the Oort cloud for many.
12P/Pons–Brooks is a periodic comet with an orbital period of 71 years. [9] Comets with an orbital period of 20–200 years are referred to as Halley-type comets.It is one of the brightest known periodic comets, reaching an absolute visual magnitude of about 5 in its approach to perihelion. [2]
As the comet warms, parts of it sublimate; [1] this gives a comet a diffuse appearance when viewed through telescopes and distinguishes it from stars. The word coma comes from the Greek κόμη (kómē), which means "hair" and is the origin of the word comet itself. [2] [3] The coma is generally made of ice and comet dust. [1]
Comet Swift–Tuttle (formally designated 109P/Swift–Tuttle) is a large periodic comet with a 1995 orbital period of 133 years that is in a 1:11 orbital resonance with Jupiter. It fits the classical definition of a Halley-type comet , which has an orbital period between 20 and 200 years. [ 4 ]