It is one of the brightest known periodic comets, reaching an absolute visual magnitude of about 5 in its approach to perihelion.

[2] Comet Pons–Brooks was conclusively discovered at Marseilles Observatory in July 1812 by Jean-Louis Pons, and on its next appearance in 1883 by William Robert Brooks.

The last perihelion passage was 21 April 2024,[5][a] with closest approach to Earth being 1.55 AU (232 million km) on 2 June 2024.

[12] The comet nucleus is estimated to be around 30 km in diameter, assuming it was not producing too much dust and gas during the 2020 photometric measurements.

The 1385 apparition was very favourable and the comet was recorded by the Chinese in Ming Shilu and was also mentioned in some European sources.

The comet was spotted with the naked eye on 13 August and by the end of the month a tail measuring 2 degrees in length was reported.

[15] An outburst was observed on 21–23 September 1883, as the comet brightened from magnitude 10–11 to 8–8.5, and its appearance changed from diffuse to star-like.

Although initially spherical, the coma became asymmetrical due to the effects of radiation pressure on the dust.

[28] By mid February the comet had brightened to magnitude 7.5 and had developed an ion tail about two degrees long that featured jets and filaments.

[32] In the following days the comet was reported to be visible by naked eye and featured a tail about 5 degrees long.

[6] In early June Earth crossed the comet's orbital plane, resulting to an anti-tail becoming visible.

[40][1] Aphelion (furthest point from the Sun) is just beyond the orbit of Neptune at 33.6 AU (5.03 billion km).

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory's (JPL) website shows that between the years 1900 and 2200, that the comet was and will be most significantly perturbed by Saturn on July 29, 1957.

Before the 2020 recovery, while the last observation was in 1954, Kinoshita calculated that the comet would come to a future perihelion passage (closest approach to the Sun) on 10 August 2095.

One more nighttime meteor shower has been tentatively associated with 12P/Pons–Brooks, the northern June Aquilids, although most probably isn't the parent body.