How often does Halley’s Comet pay us a visit?
Created | Updated Aug 24, 2006
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Question and Answers.
How often does Halley’s Comet pay us a visit?
Halley’s (rhymes with “valley’s”) Comet is the most famous comet known. A
comet is a large ball of ice that formed in the Oort Cloud, that is a could containing millions
of millions of comets about 2 light years from the Sun, and has been captured in the Sun’s
gravity and orbits the Sun.
Many comets take thousands of years to complete each orbit and some can take as little as three
years.
Edmond Halley was and English Astronomer and was working with Christopher Wren (who later was the
architect of Saint Paul’s Cathedral) and Robert Hooke in the 1680s. They were trying to
find some proof for ‘The Inverse-Square Law’ that states that the gravitational pull
on a celestial body is proportional to the inverse square of its distance.
Halley went to Cambridge University to ask for help from Sir Isaac Newton. In 1695 Halley wrote
to Newton. He had noticed that the comet of 1682 followed a path almost identical to the one of
the comet of 1607 and 1531. Halley had a strong suspicion that the three comets were actually
one. Halley believed that the comet occurred at roughly 75-year intervals but was not able to
give precise times since the influence of the giant planets Jupiter and Saturn. He predicted that
the comet would appear again in late 1758 or early 1759.
The comet did appear in late 1758. In fact it appeared on Christmas night and was first spotted
through a German farmer’s homemade telescope. Halley didn’t live to see this revealed
since he died in 1742 but the comet was named after him as Halley’s Comet. It is now
documented that Halley’s Comet appears once every 76.0 years. It appeared twice in the last
century in 1910 and was last seen in 1986. It will appear again in 2062. It is believed that it
appeared in 1066 before the Battle of the Hastings and was a bad omen for King Harold. However
William used it as his war cry, “A new star, a new king”.
I have made several batches of questions. This question is from the second batch. To find
other batches of questions plus the newest one return to the main h2g2 as Q and A page using the
first link below. Other questions in this batch are also below.
| h2g2as Q and A | Find the answers to many space related questions. |
| What is between Mars and Jupiter in our Solar System? | The large belt of asteroid that sperates the terrestiral planets from the gas giants. |
| How far away is the sun? | The distance to our star. How far its light and heat has to travel. |
| How long does it take the Moon to Orbit the Earth? | Our nearest neighbour's orbit defines our months. |
| How often does Halley’s Comet pay us a visit? | The most famous comet and the only comet not to be named after the discoverer. |
| Which planets have a ring-system? | The Lord of the Rings. |
| What is the giant red spot on Jupiter? | The spot light is on Jupiter. |
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