Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 the best orbital calculations suggested that the comet would pass within of the center of Jupiter, a distance smaller than the planet's radius, meaning that there was an extremely high probability that SL9 would collide with Jupiter in July 1994. Studies suggested that the train of nuclei would plow into Jupiter's atmosphere over a period of about five days. The discovery that the comet was likely to collide with Jupiter caused great excitement within the astronomical community and beyond, as astronomers had never before seen two significant Solar System bodies collide. Intense studies of the comet were undertaken, and as
Great January Comet of 1910 twilight, its noticeably curved tail reaching up to 50 degrees by early February. The year 1910 saw considerable media interest in the predicted return of Halley's Comet, which reached perihelion on April 20. The appearance of the Daylight Comet several months earlier therefore came as something of a surprise, and made an extremely strong impression on an expectant public; when Halley's Comet returned again in 1986, many older people's accounts of having seen it in 1910 clearly referred to the Daylight Comet instead. Owing to a "telephonic error", the comet was initially reported as being named Drake's Comet, though once