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A comet is an icy, small Solar System body that warms and begins to release gases when passing close to the Sun, a process called outgassing. This produces an extended, gravitationally unbound atmosphere or coma surrounding the nucleus, and sometimes a tail of gas and dust gas blown out from the coma.
Jul 9, 2024 · A comet has two tails that get longer the closer it gets to the Sun. Both tails are always directed away from the Sun. The ion tail (blue) always points directly away from the Sun, while the dust tail (yellow) points away from the Sun in a slightly different direction than the ion tail.
Comets are frozen leftovers from the formation of the solar system composed of dust, rock, and ices. They range from a few miles to tens of miles wide, but as they orbit closer to the Sun, they heat up and spew gases and dust into a glowing head that can be larger than a planet.
Jul 19, 2024 · Comet, a small body orbiting the Sun with a substantial fraction of its composition made up of volatile ices. Comets are among the most-spectacular objects in the sky, with their bright glowing comae and their long tails. Comets can appear at random from any direction as they move in eccentric orbits around the Sun.
Jul 31, 2023 · Comets: Everything you need to know about the 'dirty snowballs' of space. References. By Charles Q. Choi, Daisy Dobrijevic. last updated 31 July 2023. Comets are our cosmic time capsules and can...
Comets actually have two tails – a dust tail and an ion (gas) tail. Most comets travel a safe distance from the Sun. For example, Halley's comet gets no closer than 55 million miles (89 million kilometers). However, some comets, called sungrazers, fly into the Sun or get so close that they break up and evaporate.
Jul 15, 2014 · Just what is a comet, exactly? Comets, the solar system's dirty snowballs, are suspected to be one of the remnants of planet formation.
