There is post on a sub I frequent that said there is going to be a [comet](https://www.npr.org/2024/10/10/nx-s1-5148895/how-to-see-comet-c-2023-a3-tsuchinshan-atlas) that won’t be seen for another 80,000 years.
How do we know this particular comet has an 80,000 year long orbit? What are those observations that tell us something like that?
80,000 years ago, as fas as I know, people weren’t writing down astronomical observations. And even if we did, we aren’t relying on their observations today. The post says they discovered this comet in 2023.
What’s our justification for saying something so definitive that this comet won’t be seen for another 80,000 years? I’m not understanding how they would even begin to determine something like that after having discovered it last year.
In: Planetary Science
Comets orbit the sun. We just see them as they go past. If you know how big it is, how fast it’s moving and the direction in which it’s moving, you can calculate its orbit around the sun and work out how long it will take.
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