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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.
The tail of a comet points toward the direction of the Sun as it is moving through space based on the laws of refraction. The comet’s tail is composed of an air-like element that is transparent as it is seen in space but only when it is faced away from the Sun. The visibility of the tail is explained by solar rays reflecting off of the tail.
Halley's Comet is the only known short-period comet that is consistently visible to the ... Another point of origin for the Halley-type comets was proposed in ...
The approach of Comet Tsuchinshan–ATLAS has particularly excited astronomers because it is a long-period comet, meaning the comet takes more ... rock and ice from the solar system's origin ...
As the comet warms, parts of it sublimate; [1] this gives a comet a diffuse appearance when viewed through telescopes and distinguishes it from stars. The word coma comes from the Greek κόμη (kómē), which means "hair" and is the origin of the word comet itself. [2] [3] The coma is generally made of ice and comet dust. [1]
As of May 2019, only 23 comets have been observed to pass within 0.1 AU (15,000,000 km; 9,300,000 mi) of Earth, including 10 which are or have been short-period comets. [36] Two of these near-Earth comets, Halley's Comet and 73P/Schwassmann–Wachmann, have been observed during multiple close approaches. [36]
When a comet has only received a provisional designation, the "name" of the comet is typically only included parenthetically after this designation, if at all. However, when a periodic comet receives a number and a permanent designation, the comet is usually notated by using its given name after its number and prefix. [9]
Comet Kohoutek (formally designated C/1973 E1 and formerly as 1973 XII and 1973f) [c] is a comet that passed close to the Sun towards the end of 1973. Early predictions of the comet's peak brightness suggested that it had the potential to become one of the brightest comets of the 20th century, capturing the attention of the wider public and the press and earning the comet the moniker of "Comet ...