Great question! Assuming you’re referring specifically to the orbital period — in other words, how long comets take to make one revolution around the Sun, or a cometary “year ...

French astronomer Michel Giacobini found this comet while skygazing from Nice Observatory. It was followed for two months and orbital calculations revealed that the comet was a periodic object ...

Eventually, these fragments separate and are scattered across the comet's orbital pathway. The last super-bright comet to visit Earth — comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) — also showed signs ...

One effect of cometary outgassing is that it changes the comet's motion. Actually, there are a number of mechanisms that can accelerate a space rock. There's orbital acceleration that can change ...

I photographed comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS as the Earth was passing through the comet's orbital plane (the flat disk-like shape ...