Comet Encke was named after German astronomer Johann Franz Encke who was responsible for calculating the comet's orbit. Encke has the shortest orbital period of any known comet within our solar ...

although some can orbit on much shorter timescales. Halley's Comet, one of the most well-known comets, orbits about every 75 ...

In 2P/Encke's case, it orbits every 3.3 years, the shortest orbit of any known periodic comet. Related: Comets: Everything you need to know about the 'dirty snowballs' of space Encke is pretty big ...

This beautiful photo shows comet C/2024 G3 (ATLAS ... when it was 600 million kilometres away. Its orbit around the sun takes 160,000 years, so we have a long wait before it returns.