Are there lots of comets coming by?

Submitted by Mindless_Fill_3473 t3_10yc8nf in askscience

How often do different "once every 50,000 year" comets come close enough to earth to see? It seems like visible comets are somewhat rare within the human life span. Do we have other comets mapped out that we know when we will see another other than Halley's?

12

Comments

You must log in or register to comment.

beef-o-lipso t1_j81s5gl wrote

Comets are rather common. They can have very different periods some very long, others shorter.

What is rare are comets that are visible to the naked eye. Been over 20 years, I think, since the last one.

What you are observing is an uptick in interest from MSM in all things space due to the JWST, Space X, happenings on the ISS and other interesting things. That means more stories and more awareness. It just seems like an uptick.

5

mfb- t1_j83f55b wrote

Replying to beef-o-lipso (#1,775,311)

Something visible to the naked eye under good viewing conditions is common. C/2022 E3 (ZTF), C/2021 A1 (Leonard), NEOWISE in 2020, C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS) - around one per year based on this small data sample. NEOWISE reached magnitude 1, making it visible even with pretty bad viewing conditions.

5

beef-o-lipso t1_j83t7tv wrote

Replying to mfb- (#1,778,002)

Thanks for the info. As I was replying I got to thinking there must be a DB that has the info like number of comets, periods, magnitudes, etc.

Be interesting to take a peek.

2