Comet
17 bodies
Halley Comet
The most famous comet, visible from Earth every 75 to 79 years. Last appeared in 1986, nex...
Encke Comet
The comet with the shortest known orbital period, circling the Sun every 3.3 years. Second...
Hale-Bopp Comet
The Great Comet of 1997, visible to the naked eye for a record 18 months. Discovered indep...
Swift-Tuttle Comet
Parent body of the Perseid meteor shower, the best annual display of shooting stars. Disco...
Tempel-Tuttle Comet
Parent body of the Leonid meteor shower. Discovered independently by Wilhelm Tempel in 186...
Hyakutake Comet
The Great Comet of 1996, discovered by amateur Yuji Hyakutake with binoculars. Passed with...
Tempel 1 Comet
Target of the NASA Deep Impact mission, which fired a 370 kg copper impactor into it in 20...
Churyumov-Gerasimenko Comet
Comet 67P, famously shaped like a rubber duck. The ESA Rosetta spacecraft orbited it for t...
Borrelly Comet
A short-period comet imaged closely by Deep Space 1 in 2001. Its bowling-pin nucleus showe...
Wild 2 Comet
Target of the NASA Stardust mission, which flew through its coma in 2004 and returned come...
Holmes Comet
A normally faint comet that erupted in October 2007, brightening by a factor of half a mil...
Ikeya-Seki Comet
The Great Comet of 1965, a Kreutz sungrazer that passed within 450,000 km of the solar sur...
Shoemaker-Levy 9 Comet
The comet that collided with Jupiter in July 1994. Captured decades earlier, it was torn i...
ISON Comet
A sungrazing comet discovered in September 2012 that promised to become spectacular. Watch...
NEOWISE Comet
The brightest comet in northern skies since Hale-Bopp, visible in July 2020. Discovered by...
Lovejoy Comet
A Kreutz sungrazer discovered by amateur Terry Lovejoy in November 2011. Survived a death ...
2I/Borisov
The first confirmed interstellar comet, discovered in August 2019 by amateur Gennady Boris...