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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. Short-period comets with orbital periods less than 20 years and low inclinations (up to 30 degrees) to the ecliptic are called traditional Jupiter-family comets (JFCs).
Its orbit around the Sun is highly elliptical, with an orbital eccentricity of 0.967 (with 0 being a circle and 1 being a parabolic trajectory). The perihelion, the point in the comet's orbit when it is nearest the Sun, is 0.59 au (88 million km). This is between the orbits of Mercury and Venus.
Periodic comets (also known as short-period comets) are comets with orbital periods of less than 200 years or that have been observed during more than a single perihelion passage [1] (e.g. 153P/Ikeya–Zhang). "Periodic comet" is also sometimes used to mean any comet with a periodic orbit, even if greater than 200 years.
Subsequent to 4479, the orbital evolution of the comet is more difficult to predict; the probability of Earth impact per orbit is estimated as 2 × 10 −8 (0.000002%). [8] Comet Swift–Tuttle is by far the largest near-Earth object (Apollo or Aten asteroid or short-period comet) to cross Earth's orbit and make repeated close approaches to ...
You have just a few weeks left to view the "comet of the century" making its 80,000-year orbit around Earth. Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan–ATLAS will be visible with the naked eye from Earth until ...
They say the comet’s orbit shape looks like an open curve. The comet may “soon escape the Solar System entirely” due to its orbit, according to Franck Marchis from the SETI Institute.
The comet will make its closest pass of Earth on Sunday, but it will be more than 143 million miles (230 million kilometers) away from our planet and won’t pose a risk.
These comets come from the Kuiper belt and scattered disk, beyond the orbit of Pluto, with possible origins in the Oort cloud for many. For comets with an orbital period of over 1000 years (semi-major axis greater than ~100 AU), see the List of near-parabolic comets.