Halley-type comet
Halley's Comet
The most famous periodic comet, seen by humans for over two thousand years and visible to the naked eye on each return.
- Distance from Earth today
- 5.22 billion km34.92 AU · light: 4 h 50 min
- Distance from the Sun today
- 5.24 billion km35.01 AU
- As of
- 4 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
- 11 km
- Dimensions
- 14.9 × 8.2 km
- Semi-major axis
- 17.86 AU (2.67 billion km)
- Perihelion
- 0.571 AU
- Aphelion
- 35.15 AU
- Orbital period
- 75.48 years
- Orbital eccentricity
- 0.968
- Orbital inclination
- 162.2°
- Last perihelion
- 9 February 1986
- Next perihelion
- 2 August 2061 (approximate)
- Minimum orbit distance from Earth’s orbit (MOID)
- 0.075 AU (11.15 million km)
- Albedo
- 0.040
Source of the figures: JPL Small-Body Database (public domain).
Description
Halley's Comet has been recorded since antiquity, but it was Edmond Halley who realised that comets seen in 1531, 1607 and 1682 were the same object and predicted its return; it reappeared in 1758, after his death, and now bears his name. It returns to the inner Solar System roughly every 75–76 years on a retrograde orbit, last in 1986 and next in 2061. In 1986 an international fleet of probes met it, and ESA's Giotto took the closest-ever images of its dark, peanut-shaped nucleus. Dust shed along its orbit produces two annual meteor showers, the Eta Aquariids in May and the Orionids in October.