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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 ...
Astronomers have been discovering weakly hyperbolic comets that were perturbed out of the Oort Cloud since the mid-1800s. Prior to finding a well-determined orbit for comets, the JPL Small-Body Database and the Minor Planet Center list comet orbits as having an assumed eccentricity of 1.0. (This is the eccentricity of a parabolic trajectory ...
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).
The estimated probability of Hale–Bopp's striking Earth in future passages through the inner Solar System is remote, about 2.5×10 −9 per orbit. [41] However, given that the comet nucleus is around 60 km in diameter, [9] the consequences of such an impact would be apocalyptic.
Periodic comets usually have elongated elliptical orbits, and usually return to the vicinity of the Sun after a number of decades. 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 ...
The comet wasn't recovered and became lost. In 2024 it was noted that Mars-crossing asteroid 2007 HE 4, which was discovered by LINEAR on 17 April 2007 with an apparent magnitude of 18.7–19.5, had a comet-like orbit. Maik Meyer found that the asteroid's orbit was a good match with the proposed orbit of comet Denning. [3]
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 .
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 Earth. [16] With a relative velocity of 60 km/s, [ 17 ] [ 18 ] an Earth impact would have an estimated energy of ~27 times that of the Cretaceous–Paleogene impactor . [ 19 ]