About 1P/Halley
1P/Halley is an anomaly comet. It swings within 0.575 AU of the Sun at perihelion.
A Halley-type comet: 20 to 200 years per lap, on a steeply tilted orbit that reaches far beyond the planets.
Anomaly comet 82 EP
1P/Halley
Position computed live · sbdb
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Live ephemeris
This object moves — fetching its current position…
Score breakdown
· 6 badgesAnomaly 120 pts → Mythic
- Halley's Comet, back in 2061 +34
- Halley-type comet +16
- Darker than charcoal +10
- Retrograde orbit +8
- Has a proper name +8
- Comet +6
Total score 82
38 more points to reach Mythic.
Badges
- Comet · +6
- Retrograde orbit · +8
- Has a proper name · +8
- Halley-type comet · +16
- Darker than charcoal · +10
- Halley's Comet, back in 2061 · +34
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 Halley-type comet: 20 to 200 years per lap, on a steeply tilted orbit that reaches far beyond the planets.
- Closest approach. At its nearest it comes within 0.57 AU of the Sun — inside the orbit of Venus.
- One lap. A single orbit around the Sun takes it about 75.9 years.
- How far it roams. Its orbit swings between 0.58 and 35.28 AU from the Sun.
Sense of scale
- Sense of scale. In everyday terms it is roughly 1.2× the height of Mount Everest.
- Walk around it. Walking its equator at a steady pace, eight hours a day, would take about 20.7 hours.
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.
Properties
- albedo
- 0.04
- aphelion au
- 35.28
- designation
- 1P
- diameter km
- 11
- eccentricity
- 0.9679
- full name
- 1P/Halley
- inclination
- 162.19
- mean motion deg day
- 0.013
- moid au
- 0.0745
- name
- 1P/Halley
- named
- yes
- orbit class
- HTC
- perihelion au
- 0.575
- semi major au
- 17.93
How to see it
Like any astronomical target, 1P/Halley 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 1P/Halley is an anomaly comet
1P/Halley scores 82 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the anomaly tier. Another 38 points would lift it into a rarer tier.
That score comes from 6 science badges — Comet, Retrograde orbit, Has a proper name, Halley-type comet, Darker than charcoal and Halley's Comet, back in 2061 — 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.