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The official names of non-periodic comets begin with a "C"; the names of periodic comets begin with "P" or a number followed by "P". Comets that have been lost or disappeared have names with a "D". Comets whose orbit has not been determined are designated with a "X" prefix.
A comet is an icy, small Solar System body that warms and begins to release gases when passing close to the Sun, a process called outgassing.This produces an extended, gravitationally unbound atmosphere or coma surrounding the nucleus, and sometimes a tail of gas and dust gas blown out from the coma.
Solar system diagram by Emanuel Bowen in 1747, when neither Uranus, Neptune, nor the asteroid belts had yet been discovered. Orbits of planets are to scale, but the orbits of moons and the sizes of bodies are not. The term "Solar System" entered the English language by 1704, when John Locke used it to refer to the Sun, planets, and comets. [288]
Their orbital periods vary from 3.2 to 366 years. As of October 2023 [update] there are 471 numbered comets (1P–471P). [ 1 ] There are 405 Jupiter-family comets (JFCs), 38 Encke-type comets (ETCs), 14 Halley-type comets (HTCs), five Chiron-type comets (CTCs), and one long-period comet ( 153P ). 75 bodies are also near-Earth comets (NECs).
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.
List of Solar System objects most distant from the Sun; List of Solar System objects by size; Lists of geological features of the Solar System; List of natural satellites (moons) Lists of small Solar System bodies; Lists of comets; List of meteor showers; Minor planets. List of minor planets. List of exceptional asteroids; List of minor planet ...
There are some bona fide behemoths sailing around the solar system.In 2021, astronomers identified a gargantuan comet — an ancient mass of ices, dust, and rocks — hurtling through our cosmic ...
This is a list of comets (bodies that travel in elliptical, parabolic, and sometimes hyperbolic orbits and display a tail behind them) listed by type. Comets are sorted into four categories: periodic comets (e.g. Halley's Comet), non-periodic comets (e.g. Comet Hale–Bopp), comets with no meaningful orbit (the Great Comet of 1106), and lost comets (), displayed as either P (periodic), C (non ...