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The main difference between an asteroid and a comet is that a comet shows a coma (tail) due to sublimation of its near-surface ices by solar radiation. A few objects were first classified as minor planets but later showed evidence of cometary activity.
The "speed" at which a planet goes around the Sun, in terms of revolutions per time, is given by the inverse of its period, and the speed difference between two planets is the difference between these. Since the time interval between two oppositions is the time it takes for 360° to be covered by that speed difference, the average interval is:
C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) is a long-period, sungrazing comet, which will reach perihelion on 13 January 2025, at a distance of 0.09 AU from the Sun. It could become the brightest comet of 2025, [4] possibly exceeding apparent magnitude of −3.5. The comet is visible in the southern hemisphere before and after perihelion.
In 1975, astronomers Clark R. Chapman, David Morrison, and Ben Zellner developed a simple taxonomic system for asteroids based on color, albedo, and spectral shape.The three categories were labelled "C" for dark carbonaceous objects, "S" for stony (siliceous) objects, and "U" for those that did not fit into either C or S. [2] This basic division of asteroid spectra has since been expanded and ...
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.
Project Icarus received wide media coverage, and inspired the 1979 disaster movie Meteor, in which the US and the USSR join forces to blow up an Earth-bound fragment of an asteroid hit by a comet. [97] The first astronomical program dedicated to the discovery of near-Earth asteroids was the Palomar Planet-Crossing Asteroid Survey.
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Discussion of possible differences in characteristics of the water in MBCs and other comets; YouTube Interview with David Jewitt (discussion on main-belt comets starts around 9 minutes into video) Impact trigger mechanism diagram by David Jewitt; Comet-like appearance of (596) Scheila; Project T3: Finding Comets in the Asteroid Population