19 Jan
2007
19 Jan
'07
5:37 p.m.
Ah, the answer is buried in the Brittanica article. Orbits that large have too many variables affecting them for the period to be known with certainty. Called 'very long period' comets, there is a chance that such a comet will be ejected from the solar system, so a periodic designation is really a crapshoot.
--- Dale Hooper <Dale.Hooper@sdl.usu.edu> wrote:
Comet West certainly was a beautiful one. I'm curious; wikipedia states that Comet West has an orbital period of ~558,000 years. So, why doesn't it have a periodic comet designation? i.e. XXX/P
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