What comet passes near Earth every 76 years?
Great comet easily seen. Halley's Comet, for example, is usually very bright when it passes through the inner Solar System every seventy-six years, but during its 1986 apparition, its closest approach to Earth was almost the most distant possible. The comet became visible to the naked eye, but was unspectacular. On the other hand, the intrinsically small and faint Comet Hyakutake (C/1996 B2) appeared very bright and spectacular due to its very close approach to Earth at its nearest during March 1996. Its passage near the Earth was one of the closest cometary approaches on record. Great comets of the past two
Near-Earth object a current short-period NEC is 0.0229 AU (8.92 LD) for Comet Tempel–Tuttle in 1366. This comet is the parent body of the Leonid meteor shower, which also produced the Great Meteor Storm of 1833. Orbital calculations show that P/1999 J6 (SOHO), a faint sungrazing comet and confirmed short-period NEC observed only during its close approaches to the Sun, passed Earth undetected at a distance of 0.0121 AU (4.70 LD) on June 12, 1999. Comet 109P/Swift–Tuttle, which is also the source of the Perseid meteor shower which hits Earth every year in August, has a roughly 130-year orbit which passes close