Because the comet's motion with respect to Jupiter was very small, it fell almost straight toward Jupiter, which is why it ended up on a Jupiter-centric orbit of very high eccentricitythat is to say, the ellipse was nearly flattened out.

However, the flyby of Comet Borrelly was a great success and returned extremely detailed images of the comet's surface.

Later it was speculated that the probe passed through the debris of Comet D / Swift, and even made a close flyby of that comet's possibly shattered nucleus at only 20 million kilometers.

Halley's prediction of the comet's return proved to be correct, although it was not seen until 25 December 1758, by Johann Georg Palitzsch, a German farmer and amateur astronomer.

The confirmation of the comet's return was the first time anything other than planets had been shown to orbit the Sun.

American satirist and writer Mark Twain was born on 30 November 1835, exactly two weeks after the comet's perihelion.

When the first calculations of the comet's orbit were made, scientists realized that it was going to pass just 0. 1 AU from the Earth on 25 March.

The amount of deuterium in the comet's water ices was determined through spectroscopic observations.

Among these craft was Stardust, which flew past Comet Wild 2 in 2004, and returned a capsule of the comet's remains to Earth in January 2006.

As such, it was believed likely that this was the comet's first visit to the inner Solar System, which would result in a spectacular display of outgassing.

The comet's nucleus was later estimated at 30 – 40 km in diameter and the orbital period was calculated at 3, 757 years ( later adjusted to 3, 065 years ).

The Deep Impact mission was the first to eject material from a comet's surface, and the mission garnered large publicity from the media, international scientists, and amateur astronomers.

The Deep Impact mission was planned to help answer fundamental questions about comets, which included what makes up the composition of the comet's nucleus, what depth the crater would reach from the impact, and where the comet originated in its formation.

Tempel 1 was rediscovered 13 orbits later in 1967 ( as 9P / 1967 L1, 1966 VII ), after British astronomer Brian G. Marsden performed precise calculations of the comet's orbit that took into account Jupiter's perturbations.

Stardust was a NASA mission to recover samples of a comet's coma.

This was the date when Earth intersected the comet's trajectory.

The meteor stream was viewable around April 23 but only in years around the parent comet's perihelion date, the last being in 2003.

It was to launch a heavily instrumented penetrator / lander into the comet's nucleus to measure temperatures and chemical composition.

CRAF was also to provide the first close-up look at how a comet's coma and its tail of dust and ions form.

The magnetometer was also to measure the comet's intrinsic magnetic field, if it has one.

On 30 September, observers, including Finlay and E. E. Barnard, began to notice that the comet's nucleus was elongated and broken into two pronounced bright balls of light, and by 17 October it was clear that it had broken into at least five fragments.

Numerous independent discoveries were made in the days immediately following the comet's discovery, but astronomical naming conventions only allowed the comet to be given the names of the first three.

It was later ( as ICE ) sent to visit Comet Giacobini-Zinner and became the first spacecraft to do so by flying through a comet's tail passing the nucleus at a distance of approximately 7800 km.

Floyd was one of six celebrities brought aboard the Tsung Spacelines ship Universe for its historic landing on Halley's Comet, and became one of the first people to walk on the comet's surface.

Observations of comet C / 1999 S4 ( LINEAR ) with the Chandra satellite in 2000 determined that X-rays observed from that comet were produced predominantly by charge exchange collisions between highly charged carbon oxygen and nitrogen minor ions in the solar wind, and neutral water, oxygen and hydrogen in the comet's coma.

Sagan suggests that in antiquity a comet could have approached so close to Earth that the jets of gas streaming from it, bent by the comet's rotation, became visible, leading to the adoption of the swastika as a symbol across the world.

Clear records of the comet's appearances were made by Chinese, Babylonian, and medieval European chroniclers, but were not recognized as reappearances of the same object at the time.

On 14 March, the Giotto space probe, launched by the European Space Agency, made the closest pass of the comet's nucleus.

Based on data retrieved by Astron, the largest ultraviolet space telescope of the time, during its Halley's Comet observations in December 1985, a group of Soviet scientists developed a model of the comet's coma.

The meteoroids spread out along the entire orbit of the comet to form a meteoroid stream, also known as a " dust trail " ( as opposed to a comet's " dust tail " caused by the very small particles that are quickly blown away by solar radiation pressure ).

Eight masterly treatises on the comet's movements were published by him in the Berliner Abhandlungen ( 1829 – 1859 ).

The comet's orbit appears to be stable between 1740 and 2167, with no strong perturbations by any of the planets.

Larger dust particles are left along the comet's orbital path while smaller particles are pushed away from the Sun into the comet's tail by light pressure.

The orbital elements and ephemeris calculated by Olbers for this return created something of a popular sensation, as they showed that the comet's coma would likely pass through the Earth's orbit during a close approach on October 29.

Archer notes that an explosion triggered on the surface of the comet by the away team has altered the comet's rotational axis.

The comet's sudden appearance very close to the sun and rapid subsequent decline in brightness both pointed to it being a sungrazing comet, and calculations of its orbit by Brian Marsden backed this suggestion.

It safely passed by Comet Wild 2 and collected dust samples from the comet's coma while imaging the comet's nucleus.

Streams of vapour observed during the comet's 1835 apparition prompted astronomer Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel to propose that the jet forces of evaporating material could be great enough to significantly alter a comet's orbit.

Deciding not to wait, Clarke instead took his inspiration from the approach of Comet Halley in 1986 and focused his sequel on the comet's future return, in 2061.

The comet became known as Storer's Comet, until Edmund Halley later predicted the comet's return ; thereafter this celestial marvel was known as Halley's Comet.

Eventually the mission crew on Halley are forced to accept that they can never return to earth and create a new biosphere within the comet's core and in some cases evolve into symbiotic organisms with the halleyform life.