9P/Tempel 1
OVERVIEW
] COMET9P/Tempel 1 is a Jupiter-family comet. It orbits the Sun at a mean distance of 3.146 . Its effective radius is 3 . It was discovered in 1867.
Struck deliberately by NASA's Deep Impact probe in 2005 to excavate and analyse the pristine material underneath its crust.
- WHAT IT IS
- Jupiter-family comet
- HOW FAR
- 3.146
- HOW BIG
- 3
- ONE ORBIT TAKES
- 5.59
Its average distance from the Sun, not from Earth.
The radius of a ball that would look the same size — the body itself is not round.
One trip round the Sun.
IMAGES
] 1 FRAMES- NASA / Jet Propulsion Laboratory / University of Maryland
Public domain
OBSERVING
] FROM WHERE YOU AREWhat it takes to see 9P/Tempel 1 for yourself. Everything in this part of the page is worked out for a real horizon, a real night and the equipment you say you have.
CATALOG DATA
] 13 FIELDSThe raw catalogue values, as the source published them, with the error bars where one was published — sorted by what each set of figures is about rather than by the order they happened to be stored in.
WHAT IT IS MADE OF
What the object is in itself, rather than how it happens to look from here.
- Rotation period
- 40.7
HOW BRIGHT IT IS
What the light adds up to, measured through one filter at a time. A magnitude is a brightness on a backwards scale — the smaller the number, the brighter the object.
- Albedo
THE ORBIT
The shape of the path, where the object sits on it, and the instant those figures were true of. An orbit is a fit to observations and drifts away from the real one either side of its epoch.
- Orbital period
- 5.585
- Eccentricity
- Inclination
- 10.47
- Longitude of ascending node
- 68.75
- Argument of perihelion
- 179.2
- Mean anomaly
- 336.59
- Element epoch
- 2457470.5000
- Perihelion passage
- 2457603.0700
- Minimum distance from Earth's orbit
- 0.529
- Orbit class
- JFc
WHEN IT WAS FOUND
Who first saw it, from where, and by what method.
- First observed
- 2008-10-25
ALSO KNOWN AS
] 3 DESIGNATIONS- Comet 9P
- Comet 9P/Tempel 1
- Common name Tempel
LOOK IT UP ELSEWHERE
] 1 SERVICEEach link carries the identifier printed beside it. Nothing on this page is a measurement of our own, so a number that disagrees with one of these is worth reporting — and a service that has never catalogued this object under this name will say so plainly.
- JPL Small-Body Database9P
The orbit these elements were taken from, with its uncertainty, its close approaches and every observation behind the fit.
CITE THIS PAGE
] DR1This page is live and its numbers move when an upstream refreshes, so the citation names the release the rows belong to rather than the day you read them. The release itself is frozen, republished as a bundle, and is what a data-availability statement should point at.
SpaceCatalog. 9P/Tempel 1 [catalogue entry]. Data release DR1 (2026-08-21). https://spacecatalog.org/object/9p-tempel-1
@misc{spacecatalog_9p-tempel-1,
author = {{SpaceCatalog}},
title = {{9P/Tempel 1}},
howpublished = {SpaceCatalog, data release DR1 (2026-08-21)},
year = {2026},
url = {https://spacecatalog.org/object/9p-tempel-1},
note = {Catalogue entry, data release DR1 (2026-08-21). Values from JPL Small-Body Database.}
}The values above were taken from JPL Small-Body Database — Public domain (NASA/JPL). Citing this page does not replace citing that catalogue.
RECENT ACTIVITY
] 3 ITEMS- A Look at Eight Outbursts of Comet 7P/Pons-Winnecke2026-06-23 · arXiv · PAPER · Ky Huynh, Michael S. P. Kelley, Jessica M. Sunshine, Quanzhi Ye, Tim Lister, Dennis Bodewits
- The Large Smooth Patch on Comet 9P/Tempel 1: Remnant of a Recent Past Event2024-11-04 · arXiv · PAPER · J. L. Rizos, T. L. Farnham, J. Kloos, J. M. Sunshine, J. L. Ortiz
- Pits on Jupiter Family Comets and the age of cometary surfaces2023-11-03 · arXiv · PAPER · Aurélie Guilbert-Lepoutre, Selma Benseguane, Laurine Martinien, Jérémie Lasue, Sébastien Besse, Björn Grieger
arXiv · UPDATED DAILY