Comet
One of the brightest comets of the 20th century, visible to the naked eye for a record 18 months.
| Type | Comet |
|---|---|
| Distance from the Sun | 177.00 AU |
| Diameter | 60 km |
| Mass | 5.70 × 10¹⁶ kg |
| Temperature | -253°C |
| Orbital period | 860,102 days |
| Rotation period | 11.35 hours |
| Apparent magnitude | -1.8 |
| Redshift | 0 |
| Discovered | 1995 |
Comets are icy bodies that vaporise as they near the Sun, and it's that boiling-off gas and dust, not the comet itself, that forms the tail.
At 60 km across, Hale-Bopp is 0.5 percent of the diameter of Earth.
Its mass is less than a thousandth of the mass of Earth.
It keeps an average distance of 177 AU from the Sun, so sunlight takes 24.5 hours to reach it.
A single orbit takes 2,355 years.
An average temperature of 20 K works out at -253 degrees Celsius, colder than the 15 degrees Earth averages.
It has been on record since 1995.
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