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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Comet | 10/10 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T13:31:54.670973+00:00 | kb-cron |
== Observation == In the outer Solar System, comets remain frozen and inactive and are extremely difficult or impossible to detect from Earth due to their small size. Statistical detections of inactive comet nuclei in the Kuiper belt have been reported from observations by the Hubble Space Telescope but these detections have been questioned. Most comets are too faint to be visible without the aid of a telescope, but a few each decade become bright enough to be visible to the naked eye. A comet may be discovered photographically using a wide-field telescope or visually with binoculars. However, even without access to optical equipment, it is still possible for the amateur astronomer to discover a sungrazing comet online by downloading images accumulated by some satellite observatories such as SOHO. SOHO's 2000th comet was discovered by Polish amateur astronomer Michał Kusiak on 26 December 2010 and both discoverers of Hale–Bopp used amateur equipment (although Hale was not an amateur).
=== Lost ===
A number of periodic comets discovered in earlier decades or previous centuries are now lost comets. Their orbits were never known well enough to predict future appearances or the comets have disintegrated. However, occasionally a "new" comet is discovered, and calculation of its orbit shows it to be an old "lost" comet. An example is Comet 11P/Tempel–Swift–LINEAR, discovered in 1869 but unobservable after 1908 because of perturbations by Jupiter. It was not found again until accidentally rediscovered by LINEAR in 2001. There are at least 18 comets that fit this category.
== In popular culture ==
The depiction of comets in popular culture is firmly rooted in the long Western tradition of seeing comets as harbingers of doom and as omens of world-altering change. Halley's Comet alone has caused a slew of sensationalist publications of all sorts at each of its reappearances. It was especially noted that the birth and death of some notable persons coincided with separate appearances of the comet, such as with writers Mark Twain (who correctly speculated that he'd "go out with the comet" in 1910) and Eudora Welty, to whose life Mary Chapin Carpenter dedicated the song "Halley Came to Jackson". In times past, bright comets often inspired panic and hysteria in the general population, being thought of as bad omens. More recently, during the passage of Halley's Comet in 1910, Earth passed through the comet's tail, and erroneous newspaper reports inspired a fear that cyanogen in the tail might poison millions, whereas the appearance of Comet Hale–Bopp in 1997 triggered the mass suicide of the Heaven's Gate cult. In science fiction, the impact of comets has been depicted as a threat overcome by technology and heroism (as in the 1998 films Deep Impact and Armageddon), or as a trigger of global apocalypse (Lucifer's Hammer, 1979) or zombies (Night of the Comet, 1984). In Jules Verne's Off on a Comet a group of people are stranded on a comet orbiting the Sun, while a large crewed space expedition visits Halley's Comet in Sir Arthur C. Clarke's novel 2061: Odyssey Three.
== Gallery ==
Videos
== See also == The Big Splash Comet vintages List of impact structures on Earth List of possible impact structures on Earth Lists of comets
== References ==
=== Footnotes ===
=== Citations ===
== Further reading == Schechner, Sara J. (1997). Comets, Popular Culture, and the Birth of Modern Cosmology. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-01150-9. Brandt, John C. & Chapman, Robert D. (2004). Introduction to Comets (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-80863-7.
== External links == Comets at NASA's Solar System Exploration International Comet Quarterly by Harvard University Catalogue of the Solar System Small Bodies Orbital Evolution Science Demos: Make a Comet by the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory Comets: from myths to reality, exhibition on Paris Observatory digital library