☄️ Comet
Comet Hale–Bopp
The Great Comet of 1997, with a heart 60 km wide.
- Size
- 60 km across
- Goes round the Sun
- every 2,530 Earth years
- Discovered
- 23 July 1995, by Alan Hale and Thomas Bopp
Did you know?
- It takes about 2,534 years to go round the Sun, so it won’t be back until around the year 4500.
- It was spotted when it was still more than a billion km from the Sun, much farther out than most comets are found.
- Two people found it on the same night, working separately, so it carries both their names.
Compare Comet Hale–Bopp with EarthSide by side, to scale, in the app
More NASA photos of Comet Hale–BoppStraight from NASA’s image library, in the app
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All of solar system
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The smallest planet, and the closest to the Sun.
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The biggest planet, with a storm larger than Earth.
Saturn
The ringed giant, light enough to float in water.