103P/Hartley 2 size and scale context

103P/Hartley 2 is the small, hyperactive comet that NASA's EPOXI mission flew past in 2010, revealing a peanut-shaped nucleus barely two kilometers long with jets of carbon-dioxide gas blasting chunks of ice into space. Read its scale context, comparisons, and journey links on the canonical object page.

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103P/Hartley 2Comet nucleus·2.3 km

81P/Wild (Wild 2)Comet nucleus·5.5 km

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Scale

OF SPACE

Between the smallest and the largest, perspective is everything.

About

A scroll-based journey through the universe, placing objects on one logarithmic scale so size can be compared across an unbroken range.

Return to Earth Browse all comparisons

Comets

103P/Hartley 2

Scale fact2.3 kmmaximum extent

Object class: Comet nucleus
Mass: ~300 million tonnes
Estimated age: ~4.5 billion years
Composition: Water ice, dust, frozen carbon dioxide

Visual creditEPOXI 2010 / NASA / JPL-Caltech / University of Maryland / Public domainSource: Wikimedia Commons

Comets

81P/Wild (Wild 2)

81P/Wild is the comet NASA's Stardust spacecraft flew through in 2004, catching grains of its coma in aerogel and returning them to Earth in 2006 — the first sample of cometary dust and the first solid material brought back from beyond the Moon.

Scale fact5.5 kmmaximum extent

Object class: Comet nucleus
Mass: ~23 billion tonnes
Estimated age: ~4.5 billion years
Composition: Water ice, dust, frozen volatiles

Visual creditStardust 2004 / NASA / Public domainSource: Wikimedia Commons

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2.30km