the.com/long period orbits
comets on a leash so long they only visit once a lifetime, if that.
means orbits around the sun taking more than 200 years to complete, usually stretched into wildly elongated ellipses by distant, weak gravity.
from astronomers split cometary orbits into short-period (under 200 years, disciplined, Kuiper-belt raised) and long-period (over 200 years, feral, Oort-cloud raised) after realizing some comets just do not come back on any human timescale.
origin pointmost start in the Oort cloud, a light-year out
comet hale-boppwont return for about 2,533 years
shapeeccentricity often near 1, almost a parabola
one-shot visitorssome pass once and get flung out forever