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Score breakdown
· 6 badges
70 pts · Epic
Epic78 pts → Anomaly
Comet Hale-Bopp, the Great Comet of 1997+28
Far-flung orbit (a > 50 AU)+14
Darker than charcoal+10
Has a proper name+8
Comet+6
Steeply tilted orbit (i > 40°)+4
Total score70
8 more points to reach Anomaly.
Badges
☄️Comet· +6
🏷️Has a proper name· +8
🕶️Darker than charcoal· +10
🛤️Far-flung orbit (a > 50 AU)· +14
📏Steeply tilted orbit (i > 40°)· +4
🎊Comet Hale-Bopp, the Great Comet of 1997· +28
✨ 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 0.89 AU of the Sun — inside the orbit of Earth.
🔁One lap. A single orbit around the Sun takes it about 2363 years.
🥏How far it roams. Its orbit swings between 0.89 and 353.91 AU from the Sun.
Sense of scale
🧱Sense of scale. In everyday terms it is about 2.8× the length of Manhattan island.
🚶Walk around it. Walking its equator at a steady pace, eight hours a day, would take about 4.7 days.
Standing on it
💨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.
Properties
albedo
0.04
aphelion au
353.98
designation
1995 O1
diameter km
60
eccentricity
0.995
full name
C/1995 O1 (Hale-Bopp)
inclination
89.29
mean motion deg day
0.0004
moid au
0.0878
name
C/1995 O1 (Hale-Bopp)
named
yes
orbit class
COM
perihelion au
0.891
semi major au
177.4
About C/1995 O1 (Hale-Bopp)
C/1995 O1 (Hale-Bopp) is an epic comet. It swings within 0.891 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/1995 O1 (Hale-Bopp) 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/1995 O1 (Hale-Bopp) is an epic comet
C/1995 O1 (Hale-Bopp) scores 70 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the epic tier. Another 8 points would lift it into a rarer tier.
That score comes from 6 science badges — Comet, Has a proper name, Darker than charcoal, Far-flung orbit (a > 50 AU), Steeply tilted orbit (i > 40°) and Comet Hale-Bopp, the Great Comet of 1997 — 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.