Key facts
- Category
- Comets
- Object class
- Comet nucleus
- Mass
- ~300 million metric tons
- Scale fact
- 2.3 kmmaximum extent
- Estimated age
- ~4.5 billion years
- Composition
- Water ice, dust, frozen carbon dioxide
103P/Hartley 2
2.3 kmmaximum extent
Explore 103P/Hartley 2 to scaleVisual creditEPOXI 2010 / NASA / JPL-Caltech / University of Maryland / Public domainSource: Wikimedia Commons
Details
103P/Hartley 2 is the small, hyperactive comet that NASA's EPOXI mission flew past in 2010, revealing a peanut-shaped nucleus about two kilometers long with jets of carbon-dioxide gas blasting chunks of ice into space.
EPOXI found two distinct activity patterns on Hartley 2. Carbon-dioxide jets from its rough ends carried fluffy chunks of water ice into the coma, while water vapor escaped through the smoother waist. The encounter provided the first clear observations linking carbon dioxide to a comet jet and resolving individual ice chunks around a nucleus.
Links
- Preset views
- Wikipedia
- 103P/Hartley 2 on Wikipedia
Size neighbors
Objects near 103P/Hartley 2 on the scale
On the logarithmic size axis, 103P/Hartley 2 falls between 9969 Braille and Methone. The band uses nearby Comet nucleus records.
Shared physical scale
8.41km
Sources
References for 103P/Hartley 2
Measurements and descriptive context are compiled by the Scale of Space team from the references below. If you find an error, please let us know.
- 103P/Hartley 2 — Wikipedia
- Visual reference: Wikimedia Commons (EPOXI 2010 / NASA / JPL-Caltech / University of Maryland, Public domain)
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About
Scale of Space is a scroll-based journey through the universe, placing objects on a single logarithmic scale so you can compare size across an unbroken range.
Guides explain selected parts of that range, while focused views filter the objects by subject.