Halley’s Comet

Halley's Comet

Halley’s Comet, also called Comet Halley, the first comet whose return was predicted and, almost three centuries later, the first to be imaged up close by interplanetary spacecraft.

In 1705 English astronomer Edmond Halley published the first catalog of the orbits of 24 comets. His calculations showed that comets observed in 1531, 1607, and 1682 had very similar orbits. Halley suggested that they were really one comet that returned approximately every 76 years, and he predicted that comet’s return in 1758. Halley did not live to see his prediction come true (he died in 1742), but the comet was sighted late in 1758, passed perihelion (closest distance to the Sun) in March 1759, and was named in Halley’s honour. Its periodic returns demonstrated that it was in orbit around the Sun and, thus, that at least some comets were members of the solar system.

Halley's Comet, 1910

Earlier passages of Halley’s Comet were later calculated and checked against historical records of comet sightings. Some have speculated that a comet observed in Greece between 467 and 466 bce may have been Halley. However, the generally accepted date for its earliest recorded appearance, which was witnessed by Chinese astronomers, was in 240 bce. Halley’s closest approach to Earth took place on April 10, 837, at a distance of only 0.04 astronomical units (AU; 6 million km [3.7 million miles]). It was the large bright comet seen six months before the Norman Conquest of England in 1066 and depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry from that time. Its passage in 1301 may have inspired the form of the Star of Bethlehem that the Italian painter Giotto used in his The Adoration of the Magi, painted around 1305. Its passages have taken place every 76 years on average, but the gravitational influence of the planets on the comet’s orbit has caused the orbital period to vary from 74.5 to slightly more than 79 years over time. During the comet’s return in 1910, Earth passed through Halley’s dust tail, which was millions of kilometres in length, with no apparent effect.

Halley's Comet

The most-recent appearance of Halley’s Comet in 1986 was greatly anticipated. Astronomers first imaged the comet with the 200-inch Hale Telescope at Palomar Observatory in California on October 16, 1982, when it was still beyond the orbit of Saturn at 11.0 AU (1.65 billion km [1 billion miles]) from the Sun. It reached perihelion at 0.587 AU (88 million km [55 million miles]) from the Sun on February 9, 1986, and came closest to Earth on April 10 at a distance of 0.417 AU (62 million km [39 million miles]).

Comet Halley nucleus

Five interplanetary spacecraft flew past the comet in March 1986: two Japanese spacecraft (Sakigake and Suisei), two Soviet spacecraft (Vega 1 and Vega 2), and a European Space Agency spacecraft (Giotto) that passed only 596 km [370 miles] from the comet’s nucleus. Close-up images of the nucleus obtained by Giotto showed a dark potato-shaped object with dimensions of about 15 × 8 km (9 × 5 miles). As expected, the nucleus proved to be a mixture of water and other volatile ices and rocky (silicate) and carbon-rich (organic) dust. About 70 percent of the nucleus surface was covered by a dark insulating “crust” that prevented water ice below it from sublimating, but the other 30 percent was active and produced huge bright jets of gas and dust. The crust turned out to be very black (blacker than coal), reflecting only about 4 percent of the sunlight it received back into space, and it was apparently a surface coating of less-volatile organic compounds and silicates. The dark surface helped explain the high temperature of about 360 kelvins (87 °C [188 °F]) as measured by Vega 1 when the comet was 0.79 AU (118 million km [73 million miles]) from the Sun. As the comet rotated on its axis, the rate of dust and gas emission varied as different active areas on the surface came into sunlight.

The spacecraft encounters proved that the comet nucleus was a solid body, in effect a “dirty snowball,” as proposed by American astronomer Fred Whipple in 1950. This discovery put to rest an alternate explanation known as the sandbank model, promoted by English astronomer R.A. Lyttleton from the 1930s to the 1980s, that the nucleus was not a solid body but rather a cloud of dust with adsorbed gases.

Dust particles shed during the comet’s slow disintegration over the millennia are distributed along its orbit. The passage of Earth through this debris stream every year is responsible for the Orionid and Eta Aquarid meteor showers in October and May, respectively.

Halley’s Comet is next expected to return to the inner solar system in 2061.