Halley's Comet
- Type
- Comet
- Diameter
- 9.32 to 4.97 miles
- Distance from Sun
- 54,472,103 to 3,261,075,630 miles
- Orbit Time
- 75.32 years
- Length of Day
- About 52.8 hours
- Date of Discovery (predicted date)
- 1758
- Halley was the first comet to be recognized as periodic, even though it had been seen repeatedly before in history. Edmond Halley was the first one to be able to calculate the time it would return to be visible in our skies.
- Draw Halley's Comet in the nightsky over your home.
- Located in
- Solar System, orbiting the Sun
- Halley is the only known short-period comet that is regularly visible to the naked eye from Earth, and the only naked-eye comet that can appear twice in a human lifetime.
- Comet Halley is commonly pronounced to rhyme with "valley", or to rhyme with "daily". Either is acceptable, as Halley's name was spelt very differently throughout his life.
- Halley last appeared in the inner parts of the Solar System in 1986 and will next appear in mid-2061.
- It was first recorded in 240 BCE, and many different people have recorded it in history, including on the Bayeux Tapestry.
- In 1986, Halley was the first comet visited by a spacecraft, Giotto, and therefore helping us understand the structure of comets.
