Until the Renaissance, the philosophical consensus on the nature of comets, promoted by Aristotle, was that they were disturbances in Earth's atmosphere. Halley was the first comet to be recognized as periodic.
The orbital path of Halley, against the orbits of the planets ( animation) The missions also provided data that substantially reformed and reconfigured these ideas for instance, it is now understood that the surface of Halley is largely composed of dusty, non-volatile materials, and that only a small portion of it is icy. These observations supported a number of longstanding hypotheses about comet construction, particularly Fred Whipple's "dirty snowball" model, which correctly predicted that Halley would be composed of a mixture of volatile ices-such as water, carbon dioxide, ammonia, and dust. ĭuring its 1986 visit to the inner Solar System, Halley's Comet became the first comet to be observed in detail by spacecraft, providing the first observational data on the structure of a comet nucleus and the mechanism of coma and tail formation. As a result of this discovery, the comet is named after Halley. But it was not until 1705 that the English astronomer Edmond Halley understood that these appearances were reappearances of the same comet.
Halley's periodic returns to the inner Solar System have been observed and recorded by astronomers around the world since at least 240 BC. Halley last appeared in the inner parts of the Solar System in 1986 and will next appear in mid-2061. Halley is the only known short-period comet that is regularly visible to the naked eye from Earth, and thus the only naked-eye comet that can appear twice in a human lifetime. Halley's Comet or Comet Halley, officially designated 1P/Halley, is a short-period comet visible from Earth every 75–79 years.
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