short-period comet

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English

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Alternative forms

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Noun

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short-period comet (plural short-period comets)

  1. (astronomy) Any periodic comet with an orbital period of less than 200 years.
    • 2014, Panos Photinos, Visual Astronomy: A Guide to Understanding the Night Sky, Morgan & Claypool Publishers, →ISBN:
      [] comets. Depending on their orbital period, comets are classified as short or long period comets. Short period comets have periods less than 200 years. For example, Halley's Comet is a short period comet, because it has a period of 76 years.
    • 2004, Neil McBride with Iain Gilmour, An Introduction to the Solar System, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 273:
      Some bodies in the Kuiper Belt will slowly evolve inwards, to Centaur orbits (as discussed in Section 7.3), from where they might evolve into short-period comet orbits under the influence of Jupiter (mainly) and Saturn. Thus orbital evolution []

Further reading

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