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Score breakdown
· 4 badges
36 pts · Rare
Rare50 pts → Epic
Far-flung orbit (a > 50 AU)+14
Retrograde orbit+8
Has a proper name+8
Comet+6
Total score36
14 more points to reach Epic.
Badges
☄️Comet· +6
⏪Retrograde orbit· +8
🏷️Has a proper name· +8
🛤️Far-flung orbit (a > 50 AU)· +14
✨ 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 0.5 AU of the Sun — inside the orbit of Venus.
🔁One lap. A single orbit around the Sun takes it about 1364 years.
🥏How far it roams. Its orbit swings between 0.5 and 245.5 AU from the Sun.
Standing on it
🔥Sunlight there. At closest approach the Sun beats down about 4 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.
Properties
aphelion au
245.48
designation
1964 L1
eccentricity
0.9959
full name
C/1964 L1 (Tomita-Gerber-Honda)
inclination
161.83
mean motion deg day
0.0007
moid au
0.158
name
C/1964 L1 (Tomita-Gerber-Honda)
named
yes
orbit class
COM
perihelion au
0.5
semi major au
123
About C/1964 L1 (Tomita-Gerber-Honda)
C/1964 L1 (Tomita-Gerber-Honda) is a rare comet. It swings within 0.5 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/1964 L1 (Tomita-Gerber-Honda) 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/1964 L1 (Tomita-Gerber-Honda) is a rare comet
C/1964 L1 (Tomita-Gerber-Honda) scores 36 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 14 points would lift it into a rarer tier.
That score comes from 4 science badges — Comet, Retrograde orbit, Has a proper name and Far-flung orbit (a > 50 AU) — 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.