2060 Chiron is a small Solar System body in the outer Solar System, orbiting the Sun between Saturn and Uranus. Discovered in 1977 by Charles Kowal, it was the first-identified member of a new class of objects now known as centaurs—bodies orbiting between the asteroid belt and the Kuiper belt.
Comet Encke, or Encke's Comet, is a periodic comet that completes an orbit of the Sun once every 3.3 years. Encke was first recorded by Pierre Méchain on 17 January 1786, but it was not recognized as a periodic comet until 1819 when its orbit was computed by Johann Franz Encke. Like Halley's Comet, it is unusual in its being named after the calculator of its orbit rather than its discoverer. Like most comets, it has a very low albedo, reflecting only 4.6% of the light its nucleus receives, although comets generate a large coma and tail that can make them much more visible during their perihelion. The diameter of the nucleus of Encke's Comet is 4.8 km.
Tempel 1 is a periodic Jupiter-family comet discovered by Wilhelm Tempel in 1867. It completes an orbit of the Sun every 5.6 years. Tempel 1 was the target of the Deep Impact space mission, which photographed a deliberate high-speed impact upon the comet in 2005. It was re-visited by the Stardust spacecraft on February 14, 2011, and came back to perihelion in August 2016. On 26 May 2024, it will make a modest approach of 0.55 AU to Jupiter which will lift the perihelion distance and 9P will next come to perihelion on 12 February 2028 when it will be 1.77 AU from the Sun.
Melpomene is a large, bright main-belt asteroid that was discovered by J. R. Hind on 24 June 1852, and named after Melpomenē, the Muse of tragedy in Greek mythology. Its historical symbol was a dagger over a star; it is in the pipeline for Unicode 17.0 as U+1CECB .
The planet Jupiter has a system of faint planetary rings. The Jovian rings were the third ring system to be discovered in the Solar System, after those of Saturn and Uranus. The main ring was discovered in 1979 by the Voyager 1 space probe and the system was more thoroughly investigated in the 1990s by the Galileo orbiter. The main ring has also been observed by the Hubble Space Telescope and from Earth for several years. Ground-based observation of the rings requires the largest available telescopes.
Comet 4P/Faye is a periodic Jupiter-family comet discovered in November 1843 by Hervé Faye at the Royal Observatory in Paris. Its most recent perihelia were on November 15, 2006; May 29, 2014; and September 8, 2021.
53P/Van Biesbroeck is a periodic comet 7 km in diameter. Its current orbital period is 12.53 years.
56P/Slaughter–Burnham is a periodic comet in the Solar System with a period of 11.54 years.
73P/Schwassmann–Wachmann, also known as Schwassmann–Wachmann 3 or SW3 for short, is a periodic comet that has a 5.4 year orbital period and that has been actively disintegrating since 1995. When it came to perihelion in March 2017, fragment 73P-BT was separating from the main fragment 73P-C. Fragments 73P-BU and 73P-BV were detected in July 2022. The main comet came to perihelion on 25 August 2022, when the comet was 0.97 AU from the Sun and 1 AU from Earth. It will be less than 80 degrees from the Sun from 25 May 2022 until August 2023. On 3 April 2025 it will make a modest approach of 0.3 AU to Jupiter. 73P will next come to perihelion on 23 December 2027 when it will be 0.92 AU from the Sun and on the far side of the Sun 1.9 AU from Earth.
84P/Giclas is a periodic comet in the Solar System. The comet nucleus is estimated to be 1.8 kilometers in diameter. In 1995 precovery images from three nights in September 1931 by Clyde W. Tombaugh were located.
114P/Wiseman–Skiff is a periodic comet in the Solar System.
Comet Urata-Niijima is a periodic comet in the Solar System discovered by Japanese astronomers Tsuneo Niijima and Takeshi Urata on October 30, 1986, at Ojima, the first orbit was calculated by Brian G. Marsden on November 5 giving an orbital period of 6.42 years.
Comet Arend or 50P/Arend is a periodic comet in the Solar System which was discovered on October 4, 1951. It was discovered by astronomer Sylvain Julien Victor Arend at the Royal Observatory of Belgium located in the municipality of Uccle. The comet was illustrated at approximately a magnitude of 14 and also exhibited a nucleus within a coma 14 arc seconds across. From its discovery, the comet has had 7 perihelions with its last return of Earth recorded on November 1, 2007. The comet's next perihelion will be in the year 2024.
115P/Maury, is a periodic Jupiter-family comet, discovered on August 16, 1985, from the Palomar Observatory by Alain Maury. When the comet was first announced on 1985 September 6, the confirmation came quickly from other observers located at the Palomar Observatory. To the initial announcement of the comet, several confirmations were announced in multiple different reports were compiled by S. Singer-Brewster, D. Schneeberger, and M. Gallup that found the 15th-magnitude trail of the comet on a plate exposed with the 0.46-m Schmidt telescope. These came from the staff at Palomar Observatory, who used the 1.5-m reflector and a CCD to detect the comet. The comet was continued to be followed and detected, leading to Scientist giving the comet a 8.6 to 8.8 orbital period.
63P/Wild is a periodic comet in the Solar System with a current orbital period of 13.21 years.
92P/Sanguin, also called Sanguin's Comet or Comet Sanguin, is a Jupiter-family comet discovered on October 15, 1977, by Juan G. Sanguin at Leoncito Astronomical Complex. It completes a single rotation approximately every 6 days.
Comet 252P/LINEAR is a periodic comet and near-Earth object discovered by the LINEAR survey on April 7, 2000. The comet is a Jupiter family comet, meaning that it passes quite close to the orbit of Jupiter.
C/2017 K2 (PanSTARRS) is an Oort cloud comet with an inbound hyperbolic orbit, discovered in May 2017 at a distance beyond the orbit of Saturn when it was 16 AU (2.4 billion km) from the Sun. Precovery images from 2013 were located by July. It had been in the constellation of Draco from July 2007 until August 2020. As of June 2022, the 3-sigma uncertainty in the current distance of the comet from the Sun is ±6000 km.
C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli–Bernstein), simply known as C/2014 UN271 or Comet Bernardinelli–Bernstein (nicknamed BB), is a large Oort cloud comet discovered by astronomers Pedro Bernardinelli and Gary Bernstein in archival images from the Dark Energy Survey. When first imaged in October 2014, the object was 29 AU (4.3 billion km; 2.7 billion mi) from the Sun, almost as far as Neptune's orbit and the greatest distance at which a comet has been discovered. With a nucleus diameter of at least 120 km (75 mi), it is the largest Oort cloud comet known. It is approaching the Sun and will reach its perihelion of 10.9 AU (just outside of Saturn's orbit) in January 2031. It will not be visible to the naked eye because it will not enter the inner Solar System.
