comet
Halley
The best-known returning comet.
Halley's retrograde orbit brings it through the inner Solar System roughly every 76 years.
- Orbit representation
- Representative mean elements
- Surface
- procedural reconstruction
Reference measurements
The numbers that shape this world
- Mean radius
- 5.5 km
- Semi-major axis
- 17.834 AU
- Orbital period
- 75.314 Earth yearsKeplerian estimate from the catalogued semi-major axis.
- Eccentricity
- 0.967
- Inclination
- 162.263°
- Visual geometry
- irregular
Orbital character
A strongly elongated path around the Sun
Halley follows a catalogued path with a 17.834 AU semi-major axis, eccentricity 0.967, and 162.263° inclination. The resulting two-body period estimate is 75.314 Earth years; the representation notes below state the source epoch and precision boundary used by Explore.
Catalogue context
Halley among its nearest Helios peers
Halley is linked with Hale–Bopp, Encke, 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, NEOWISE, Tempel 1 inside the Helios comet selection. The grouping keeps adjacent reading coherent; it does not imply that these bodies share the same composition, origin, or present physical state.
Representation notes
What Explore is showing
A published JPL SBDB sample element set is propagated with a two-body solver for visual preview only; use Horizons for accurate ephemerides.
Reference-guided visual reconstruction based on cited mission records; no source raster is reproduced.
Provenance