This object moves — fetching its current position…
Score breakdown
· 3 badges
22 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon34 pts → Rare
Retrograde orbit+8
Has a proper name+8
Comet+6
Total score22
12 more points to reach Rare.
Badges
☄️Comet· +6
⏪Retrograde orbit· +8
🏷️Has a proper name· +8
✨ Trivia
Hard to believe
🔄Against the traffic. It goes round the Sun backwards, against the direction every planet and almost everything else travels.
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 1.7 AU of the Sun — inside the orbit of Jupiter.
🔁One lap. A single orbit around the Sun takes it about 223 years.
🥏How far it roams. Its orbit swings between 1.7 and 71.74 AU from the Sun.
Standing on it
🥶Sunlight there. Even at its closest the sunlight is only about 35% as strong as Earth's.
☄️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
71.75
designation
2010 J1
eccentricity
0.9538
full name
C/2010 J1 (Boattini)
inclination
134.38
mean motion deg day
0.0044
moid au
0.735
name
C/2010 J1 (Boattini)
named
yes
orbit class
COM
perihelion au
1.696
semi major au
36.72
About C/2010 J1 (Boattini)
C/2010 J1 (Boattini) is an uncommon comet. It swings within 1.696 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/2010 J1 (Boattini) 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/2010 J1 (Boattini) is an uncommon comet
C/2010 J1 (Boattini) scores 22 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 12 points would lift it into a rarer tier.
That score comes from 3 science badges — Comet, Retrograde orbit and Has a proper name — 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.