comet
Tempel 1
The target of Deep Impact.
Tempel 1 is a Jupiter-family comet examined by both Deep Impact and Stardust-NExT.
- Orbit representation
- verified fallback
- Surface
- procedural reconstruction
Reference measurements
The numbers that shape this world
- Mean radius
- 3 km
- Semi-major axis
- 3.193 AU
- Orbital period
- 5.704 Earth yearsKeplerian estimate from the catalogued semi-major axis.
- Eccentricity
- 0.517
- Inclination
- 10.47°
- Visual geometry
- irregular
Orbital character
A strongly elongated path around the Sun
Tempel 1 follows a catalogued path with a 3.193 AU semi-major axis, eccentricity 0.517, and 10.47° inclination. The resulting two-body period estimate is 5.704 Earth years; the representation notes below state the source epoch and precision boundary used by Explore.
Catalogue context
Tempel 1 among its nearest Helios peers
Tempel 1 is linked with Halley, Hale–Bopp, Encke, 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, NEOWISE 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 bundled frozen six-element preview preserves the documented body scope. It was not freshly re-fetched from SBDB in this build environment and must not be presented as an accurate or current ephemeris.
Reference-guided visual reconstruction based on cited mission records; no source raster is reproduced.
Provenance