7P/Pons–Winnecke
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7P/Pons–Winnecke is a Jupiter-family comet roughly 5 km in diameter that takes six-years to orbit the Sun. The next perihelion passage is 25 August 2027 when the comet will have a solar elongation of
An illustration of Pons–Winnecke approaching the Earth in 1921.
Mariner 5
Hyakutake Color
Comet nucleus
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The nucleus is the solid, central part of a comet, formerly termed a dirty snowball or an icy dirtball. A cometary nucleus is composed of rock, dust, and frozen gases. When heated by the Sun, the gase
7P/Pons–Winnecke
…0.44 AU (66 million km) from Earth on 12 June 2021. Before that it came to perihelion on 30 January 2015 with a solar elongation of 24 degrees. The comet nucleus is estimated to be 5.2 km (3.2 mi) in diameter. Photometric measurements from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) reveals that the comet exhibited…
The nucleus of Comet Tempel 1
Tempel 1 and Hartley 2 compared
C/2006 W3 (Christensen) – emitting carbon gas
Surface of the nucleus of Comet 67P from 10 km away as seen by Rosetta spacecraft