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Comets XII Animation
This animation shows the motion of the solar system bodies until beyond Pluto for one century from 1950 to 2050. Comets (in blue squares) seem to arrive all together near the Earth and the Sun and then go back outside the solar system. The visible orbits are those of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. In fact, it is a bias due to the dates of discoveries: comets discovered nowadays are followed in the past and in the future but comets to be discovered in the next years are not in the animation. This motion is actually permanent: comets are coming from outside the outer planets, pass near the Sun and go back except if gravitational perturbations have changed the orbital parameters of the comets (capture on a short period orbit).