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Where do most short-period comets originate?
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Comet
Comet McNaught with filamentary tail and the Moon over the Pacific Ocean, photographed from Paranal Observatory, Chile, January 2007.
Most short-period comets originate from the Kuiper belt, a flattened disk of icy bodies located beyond the orbit of Neptune.12
Specifically, the Jupiter-family cometsāa subset of short-period cometsāare believed to originate from the scattered disk, which consists of Kuiper belt objects that have been perturbed into more eccentric and inclined orbits with perihelia near Neptune. Neptune then gravitationally scatters these objects inward toward the planetary region, where they can be captured into short-period orbits. While the Oort cloud is the primary source for long-period comets, the Kuiper belt is the established source for the majority of observed short-period comets.12