This object moves — fetching its current position…
Score breakdown
· 5 badges
50 pts · Epic
Epic78 pts → Anomaly
Passes within two lunar distances of Earth's orbit+18
Far-flung orbit (a > 50 AU)+14
Has a proper name+8
Comet+6
Steeply tilted orbit (i > 40°)+4
Total score50
28 more points to reach Anomaly.
Badges
☄️Comet· +6
🏷️Has a proper name· +8
🪡Passes within two lunar distances of Earth's orbit· +18
🛤️Far-flung orbit (a > 50 AU)· +14
📏Steeply tilted orbit (i > 40°)· +4
✨ Trivia
What it actually is
🛸Its orbit family. A long-period comet falling in from the Oort Cloud, where it spent billions of years in the deep freeze before something nudged it loose.
🌞Closest approach. At its nearest it comes within 0.47 AU of the Sun — inside the orbit of Venus.
🌀Wild orbit. Its highly elliptical path swings between scorching and frozen each lap.
📐Steeply tilted. Its orbit is tipped 76° out of the flat plane the planets share — it spends most of its time well above or below them.
Standing on it
🔥Sunlight there. At closest approach the Sun beats down about 4.5 times harder than it ever does on Earth.
💨Growing a tail. Once inside roughly the orbit of Mars the ice starts turning straight to gas, blowing out the coma and tail that make a comet a comet.
☄️Tail. Its tail always points away from the Sun, never trailing behind its motion — it is blown, not dragged.
By the numbers
🧊Made of. A comet is a dirty snowball: water ice, frozen carbon dioxide and dust, held together loosely enough that some simply crumble when the Sun warms them.
Properties
aphelion au
12804.16
designation
1969 T1
eccentricity
0.9999
full name
C/1969 T1 (Tago-Sato-Kosaka)
inclination
75.82
mean motion deg day
0
moid au
0.0006
name
C/1969 T1 (Tago-Sato-Kosaka)
named
yes
orbit class
COM
perihelion au
0.473
semi major au
6402
About C/1969 T1 (Tago-Sato-Kosaka)
C/1969 T1 (Tago-Sato-Kosaka) is an epic comet. It swings within 0.473 AU of the Sun at perihelion.
A long-period comet falling in from the Oort Cloud, where it spent billions of years in the deep freeze before something nudged it loose.
How to see it
Like any astronomical target, C/1969 T1 (Tago-Sato-Kosaka) is best seen from a dark site away from city lights, and when it is above the horizon depends on your latitude and the time of year. Because it moves against the background stars, the live position panel on this page tracks where it is right now. The visibility panel above works out tonight's viewing window for your saved location.
Why C/1969 T1 (Tago-Sato-Kosaka) is an epic comet
C/1969 T1 (Tago-Sato-Kosaka) scores 50 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the epic tier. Another 28 points would lift it into a rarer tier.
That score comes from 5 science badges — Comet, Has a proper name, Passes within two lunar distances of Earth's orbit, Far-flung orbit (a > 50 AU) and Steeply tilted orbit (i > 40°) — each earned for a real, measurable property of the object. Rarity on Spacedle is never random: the more remarkable an object's astrophysics, the more badges it collects, the higher it scores, and the rarer it ranks.