Where is Halley's Comet now?
- Distance from the Sun
- about 35 au 5.2 billion km, on 28 August 2026
- Furthest it ever gets
- 35.3 au it is within 1 per cent of that now
- Last seen
- 1986
- Next return
- 2061
Where it is
On 28 August 2026 Halley's Comet was about 35 astronomical units from the Sun, out beyond Neptune's orbit. That is within one per cent of the furthest its orbit ever takes it, and the arithmetic says why: it passed the Sun in February 1986 and takes about 76 years to go round, so the halfway point, the far end of the orbit, fell around 2024. It is past that now, and has just begun the long fall back towards the Sun.
Why there is nothing to see
A comet only grows its coma and tail near the Sun, where the ice sublimates. Out at 35 au Halley is a bare nucleus, dark and far too faint for anything but the largest telescopes. NASA gives its return as 2061, when it will once again be the naked-eye comet people remember from 1986.
You can still see pieces of it this year
Halley sheds debris along its whole orbit, and Earth flies through that stream twice a year. NASA credits it with two annual meteor showers, the Eta Aquarids in May and the Orionids in October, so the dust of the comet turns up over your head every year while the comet itself creeps along five billion kilometres away.
How the model shows it
The model propagates Halley's recorded orbit from JPL's small-body database, so opening it shows the comet sitting near the far end of its ellipse, barely moving against the planets. The distances on this page were computed for the date given; the model recomputes them for whatever date you set.