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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.
Little is known of what people thought about comets before Aristotle, who observed his eponymous comet, and most of what is known comes secondhand.From cuneiform astronomical tablets, and works by Aristotle, Diodorus Siculus, Seneca, and one attributed to Plutarch but now thought to be Aetius, it is observed that ancient philosophers divided themselves into two main camps.
Comets are suspected of splitting due to thermal stress, internal gas pressure, or impact. [86] Comets 42P/Neujmin and 53P/Van Biesbroeck appear to be fragments of a parent comet. Numerical integrations have shown that both comets had a rather close approach to Jupiter in January 1850, and that, before 1850, the two orbits were nearly identical ...
As space objects go, comets and meteors are not very big. While a planet like Earth is about 8,000 miles in diameter and a star like our Sun is about 865,000 miles across, the largest asteroid ...
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 ...
Oct. 15-19: (Comet) may produce an anti-tail — a bright streak that appears to be pointing toward the Sun, opposite the other tails. Oct. 20-31: Comet will be visible with binoculars and telescopes.
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.
Comet Encke / ˈ ɛ ŋ k i /, or Encke's Comet (official designation: 2P/Encke), is a periodic comet that completes an orbit of the Sun once every 3.3 years. (This is the shortest period of a reasonably bright comet; the faint main-belt comet 311P/PanSTARRS has a period of 3.2 years.)