juliensimon/mpc-comet-elements

MPC Comet Orbital Elements

Part of the Orbital Mechanics Datasets collection on Hugging Face.

Orbital elements for 946 known comets published by the Minor Planet Center (MPC). Covers periodic, long-period, defunct, and interstellar objects.

Dataset description

The MPC maintains the authoritative catalogue of comet orbits, updated as new observations refine existing solutions and new comets are discovered. Each record contains the six Keplerian orbital elements (perihelion distance, eccentricity, argument of perihelion, longitude of the ascending node, inclination, and perihelion date), plus absolute magnitude and slope parameter.

Schema

Column	Type	Description
periodic_comet_number	Int64	IAU periodic comet number (null for non-periodic)
orbit_type	string	MPC orbit type code: C (long-period), P (periodic), D (defunct), X (uncertain), I (interstellar), A (minor-planet-like)
orbit_type_name	string	Human-readable orbit type
packed_designation	string	MPC packed provisional designation
perihelion_year	int	Year of perihelion passage
perihelion_month	int	Month of perihelion passage
perihelion_day	float	Day of perihelion passage (TT)
perihelion_date	datetime	Perihelion passage date (truncated to day)
perihelion_distance_au	float64	Perihelion distance (AU)
eccentricity	float64	Orbital eccentricity
arg_perihelion_deg	float64	Argument of perihelion, J2000.0 (degrees)
lon_asc_node_deg	float64	Longitude of the ascending node, J2000.0 (degrees)
inclination_deg	float64	Inclination to ecliptic, J2000.0 (degrees)
epoch_date	datetime	Epoch of osculating elements (perturbed solutions)
absolute_magnitude_h	float64	Absolute (total) magnitude parameter H
slope_parameter_g	float64	Photometric slope parameter G
orbital_period_years	float64	Orbital period in years (Kepler's 3rd law, null for hyperbolic)
is_hyperbolic	bool	True if eccentricity >= 1.0
name	string	Comet name / designation
reference	string	MPC reference for the orbit solution

Quick stats

• 946 comets total
• 639 periodic (P), 290 long-period (C), 3 defunct (D)
• 115 on hyperbolic orbits (eccentricity >= 1)
• Perihelion distances range from 0.0057 to 14.1 AU
• Closest perihelion: C/2026 A1 (MAPS) at 0.005738 AU

Usage

from datasets import load_dataset

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

# All periodic comets
periodic = df[df["orbit_type"] == "P"].sort_values("perihelion_distance_au")

# Hyperbolic / interstellar visitors
hyperbolic = df[df["is_hyperbolic"]].sort_values("eccentricity", ascending=False)

# Sun-grazing comets (perihelion < 0.05 AU)
sungrazers = df[df["perihelion_distance_au"] < 0.05]

# Distribution of inclinations
df["inclination_deg"].hist(bins=50)

Data source

Minor Planet Center — Comet Orbital Elements. Format documentation: Comet Orbit Format.

Update schedule

Rebuilt monthly (static dataset).

Related datasets

• neo-close-approaches — NEO close approaches from NASA JPL
• mpc-asteroid-orbits — MPC asteroid orbital elements

Pipeline

Source code: juliensimon/space-datasets

Citation

@dataset{mpc_comet_elements,
  author = {Simon, Julien},
  title = {MPC Comet Orbital Elements},
  year = {2026},
  publisher = {Hugging Face},
  url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/mpc-comet-elements},
  note = {Based on data from the IAU Minor Planet Center}
}

License

CC-BY-4.0