Comets
What is a Comet?
Comets are thought to be remnants of planet formation otherwise known as “dirty snowballs” which orbit the Sun in an eccentric orbit. They are made of different ices, such as water, carbon dioxide, ammonia and methane. These materials came from the time when the Solar System was formed 4.6 billion years ago. Comets are composed of different layers. The icy inner most layer of a comet is called the nucleus. The nucleus is surrounded by a large cloud of gas and dust called the coma. As the comet gets closer to the Sun, the comet becomes warmer and the ice in the nucleus melts and vaporizes creating a cloud and that is how the coma is formed. As comets travel closer to the Sun, they develop a tails: an ion tail and a dust tail. The comet is approaching the Sun causing it to heat up and crack. As it cracks, gasses can escape from the icy shell and mixes with the charged particles from the Sun’s solar winds which then converts the gas into ions, which forms the ion tail. The dust tail is formed as the comet gets closer to the Sun. The radiation from the Sun pushes dust particles away from the coma, forming a dust tail. Since these tails are formed by the radiation and winds coming from the Sun, they always face away from the Sun.
Where do Comets Come From?
Comets usually come from two regions of our solar system. The first is the Kuiper Belt, which is a disk of icy bodies that lies just beyond the orbit of Neptune. The second region is called the Oort Cloud which is a more distant, spherical collection of objects that marks the very edge of our Solar System. Comets that orbit the Sun for 200 years or less usually come from the Kuiper Belt while comets that orbit the Sun for thousands of years typically come from the Oort Cloud.
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