juliensimon/comet-catalog

Comet Catalog

Credit: NASA/ESA

Part of a dataset collection on Hugging Face.

Dataset description

Catalog of comets sourced from Wikidata, including orbital parameters, discovery dates, discoverers, and named-after information.

Comets are small icy bodies that develop a coma and tails when approaching the Sun. They originate from the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud and follow highly eccentric orbits ranging from short-period comets (< 200 years) to long-period and hyperbolic visitors.

This dataset aggregates structured comet data from Wikidata's SPARQL endpoint, capturing orbital mechanics (period, perihelion distance, eccentricity, inclination), discovery metadata (date, discoverer), and cultural information (named-after entities). It covers historically significant comets like Halley's Comet and Hale-Bopp through recently discovered objects.

The data enables studies of comet population statistics, orbital dynamics, discovery rate trends over time, and the history of comet observation and naming conventions.

This dataset is suitable for tabular classification tasks.

Schema

Column	Type	Description	Sample	Null %
wikidata_id	str	Wikidata entity ID (e.g. 'Q1390' for Halley's Comet); stable URI key for enrichment joins; links to full orbital history, discovery details, and apparition records in the knowledge graph	Q108916424	0.0%
name	string	Comet name or designation (e.g. '1P/Halley', 'C/1995 O1 (Hale-Bopp)'); periodic comets use the NP/ prefix (N=number, P=periodic); non-periodic use C/; interstellar use I/	(248370) 2005 QN173	0.0%
discovery_date	str	ISO 8601 date (YYYY-MM-DD) of the discovery observation; null for historically known comets (e.g. Halley, visible since antiquity) or where records are too uncertain to assign a precise date	2005-08-29	44.7%
discoverer	string	Name(s) of the person(s) or survey program credited with discovery; null for historically anonymous comets; modern entries may list an observatory or automated survey (e.g. LINEAR, NEOWISE)	Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking	42.7%
orbital_period_yr	float64	Orbital period in years; short-period (Jupiter-family) comets are typically <20 yr; Halley-type 20-200 yr; long-period >200 yr; null for hyperbolic or parabolic orbits where the comet makes a single unbound pass	1962.041117960935	35.8%
perihelion_au	float64	Closest approach distance to the Sun in AU; determines peak cometary activity and tail development; <1 AU enters the inner solar system; <0.3 AU is the sungrazing regime	2.378504355705254	4.1%
eccentricity	float64	Orbital eccentricity; 0 = circular, <1 = elliptical (bound), =1 = parabolic, >1 = hyperbolic (unbound, possibly of interstellar origin); null when orbital solution is unavailable	0.2245314914976407	3.9%
inclination_deg	float64	Orbital inclination relative to the ecliptic plane in degrees (0-180); <30 indicates prograde low-inclination orbit typical of Jupiter-family comets; >90 indicates retrograde orbit	0.0681325863422806	4.1%
named_after	string	Entity (person, place, or concept) that the comet's name commemorates, distinct from the discoverer; null when the comet is named solely after its discoverer(s)	Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research	96.8%
epoch	string	Reference epoch for the orbital elements in ISO 8601 format (YYYY-MM-DD); elements are valid near this date and diverge for predictions far from the epoch; null when orbital solution is absent	http://www	6.4%
discovery_year	float64	Year of discovery derived from discovery_date; retained as a standalone column for easy filtering and grouping; null when discovery_date is null	2005.0	44.9%

Quick stats

• 1,303 comets in catalog
• 837 with orbital period data
• 1,250 with perihelion distance
• 1,252 with eccentricity
• 747 with named discoverer
• Discovery years: -42 -- 2026
• Top discoverers: Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (55), Jean-Louis Pons (27), Pan-STARRS (27), Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking (25), Robert H. McNaught (23)

Usage

from datasets import load_dataset

ds = load_dataset("juliensimon/comet-catalog", split="train")
df = ds.to_pandas()

from datasets import load_dataset

ds = load_dataset("juliensimon/comet-catalog", split="train")
df = ds.to_pandas()

# Short-period comets (period < 200 years)
short_period = df[df["orbital_period_yr"] < 200].dropna(subset=["orbital_period_yr"])
print(f"{len(short_period):,} short-period comets")

# Most recently discovered comets
recent = df.dropna(subset=["discovery_year"]).nlargest(10, "discovery_year")
print(recent[["name", "discovery_year", "discoverer"]])

# Highly eccentric comets (near-parabolic or hyperbolic)
high_ecc = df[df["eccentricity"] >= 0.99].dropna(subset=["eccentricity"])
print(high_ecc[["name", "eccentricity", "orbital_period_yr"]])

# Perihelion distance distribution
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
valid = df.dropna(subset=["perihelion_au"])
plt.hist(valid["perihelion_au"], bins=50, range=(0, 10))
plt.xlabel("Perihelion distance (AU)")
plt.ylabel("Count")
plt.title("Comet Perihelion Distribution")
plt.show()

Data source

https://www.wikidata.org/

Related datasets

• juliensimon/mpc-comet-elements

• juliensimon/jpl-small-body-database

• juliensimon/fireball-bolide-events

If you find this dataset useful, please consider giving it a like on Hugging Face. It helps others discover it.

About the author

Created by Julien Simon — AI Operating Partner at Fortino Capital. Part of the Space Datasets collection.

Citation

@dataset{comet_catalog,
  title = {Comet Catalog},
  author = {juliensimon},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/comet-catalog},
  publisher = {Hugging Face}
}

License

CC0-1.0