Comets: I see them in flight mode, but Sentinels haven't found them yet

[DeadJohn]

I recently upgraded to 1.10.1. (with mods, but nothing that should change comet behavior)

I have 2 sentinels in solar orbit. They are finding many unknown objects in the tracking station like they are supposed to. So far, every unknown object that I start tracking has turned out to be an asteroid. I've read that KSP comets are rare so maybe this is normal. How do I know when a Sentinel found a comet? Do I have to track every unknown object? Or will comets always be larger than size class E so I can tell before tracking the unknown object?

Despite no apparent comets found by sentinels, I've seen distant comets with tails in the sky while I'm on the launch pad. Is KSP's comet sky display unrelated to actual comet objects?

Do any common mods like Scatterer, EVE, or Distant Object Enhancement add their own comet displays? Maybe that's what I'm seeing in the sky but I don't recall that ever happening before 1.10. My only new mod in 1.10 is MOLE, which only adds parts and a new science lab methodology.
 

 

Edited September 12, 2020 by DeadJohn

[jimmymcgoochie]

Comets are almost always larger than asteroids, in most cases substantially larger (class G-I versus A-E for comets), and they're more likely to appear in highly elliptical or even hyperbolic trajectories, travelling really far from the Sun or escaping from the solar system entirely. Either way, they'll appear just like comets in the tracking station until you track them, but if you find a comet it will probably have a distinctive name like Dooley-Hartgen-Milsner* rather than Ast. D-6442 as asteroids do and probably a much higher mass too. If you can see its tail in flight, it's a comet and should be really conspicuous on the map as the tails still show up in map view and in the tracking station (I think, but might be wrong- haven't done much in 1.10 so I can't say for sure).

*name invented for illustrative purposes only, I haven't played a lot with 1.10 so can't provide an example of one I actually got.

[Spricigo]

4 hours ago, jimmymcgoochie said:

so can't provide an example of one I actually got.