Jupiter-family comet
Comet Borrelly
A Jupiter-family comet with a dark, bowling-pin-shaped nucleus, photographed up close by NASA's Deep Space 1 in 2001.
- Distance from Earth today
- 895.5 million km5.986 AU · light: 49 min 47 s
- Distance from the Sun today
- 787.9 million km5.267 AU
- As of
- 2 November 2026position from NASA/JPL orbital elements
Where it is today
Top view of the plane of Earth’s orbit, compressed distance scale. Open on the big map with the time slider →
Facts
- Diameter
- 4.80 km
- Semi-major axis
- 3.609 AU (539.9 million km)
- Perihelion
- 1.309 AU
- Aphelion
- 5.909 AU
- Orbital period
- 6.86 years
- Orbital eccentricity
- 0.637
- Orbital inclination
- 29.3°
- Last perihelion
- 2 February 2022
- Next perihelion
- 11 December 2028
- Minimum orbit distance from Earth’s orbit (MOID)
- 0.323 AU (48.29 million km)
- Albedo
- 0.022
Source of the figures: JPL Small-Body Database (public domain).
Discovery: 1904 – Alphonse Borrelly
Description
Comet Borrelly was discovered by Alphonse Borrelly in Marseille in 1904 and returns to the inner Solar System every few years. In 2001 NASA's experimental Deep Space 1 spacecraft, built mainly to test ion propulsion, flew past it and returned what were then the best images of a comet nucleus. They showed an elongated, bowling-pin-shaped body with one of the darkest surfaces known in the Solar System, with gas and dust escaping in narrow jets from only a small fraction of its surface.