short-period comet

See also: short period comet

English

Alternative forms

• short period comet

Noun

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

• List of periodic comets on Wikipedia.Wikipedia