Comet West–Hartley is a periodic comet roughly 4 km in diameter with a 7.67-year orbit around the Sun. The current orbit does not bring it closer than about from Earth. It came to perihelion on 21 September 2026 and comes to opposition on 1 May 2027. It next reaches perihelion on 22 May 2034.
Physical characteristics The first attempts to measure the effective radius of its nucleus in 2000 were not successful due to too much scatter data in light curves obtained to provide reliable estimates. Recent attempts to measure the comet's light curves between 2004 and 2015 revealed that the nucleus is about in radius, rotating once every 3.7 hours.
References
External links
at the Minor Planet Center database 123P/West–Hartley at Gary W. Kronk's Cometography 123P/West–Hartley at Gideon van Buitenen's website 123P/West–Hartley at Seiichi Yoshida's website 123P/West–Hartley at the Comet Observations Database (COBS) 123P/West–Hartley on 2026 Apr 06 at apmag 17.6