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The word comet derives from the Old English cometa from the Latin comēta or comētēs. That, in turn, is a romanization of the Greek κομήτης 'wearing long hair', and the Oxford English Dictionary notes that the term (ἀστὴρ) κομήτης already meant 'long-haired star, comet' in Greek.
A comet tail and coma are visible features of a comet when they are illuminated by the Sun and may become visible from Earth when a comet passes through the inner Solar System. As a comet approaches the inner Solar System, solar radiation causes the volatile materials within the comet to vaporize and stream out of the nucleus , carrying dust ...
This unique spiral galaxy, which is situated 3.2 billion light-years from the Earth, has an extended stream of bright blue knots and diffuse wisps of young stars. [2] It rushes at 3.6 million km/h (1000km/s [2]) through the cluster Abell 2667 and therefore, like a comet, shows a tail, with a length of 600,000 light-years.
Periodic comets (also known as short-period comets) are comets with orbital periods of less than 200 years or that have been observed during more than a single perihelion passage [1] (e.g. 153P/Ikeya–Zhang). "Periodic comet" is also sometimes used to mean any comet with a periodic orbit, even if greater than 200 years.
The presence of the comet was also confirmed by professional astronomers on 24 July, who estimated its magnitude to be between 3 and 3.4. [3] On 25 July, Alan McClure photographed the comet and noted it had a tail 21 degrees long and an antitail about 3.3° long, while visually the tail extended for 23 degrees and the anti-tail for 1.5 degrees.
A meteor or shooting star [8] is the visible passage of a meteoroid, comet, or asteroid entering Earth's atmosphere. At a speed typically in excess of 20 km/s (72,000 km/h; 45,000 mph), aerodynamic heating of that object produces a streak of light, both from the glowing object and the trail of glowing particles that it leaves in its wake.
There’s an endless procession of ‘north stars’, because the Earth’s axis is not fixed in space, writes Nigel Henbest February night sky: Key dates for moons, comets and stars this month ...
An artist's concept of a planetary system. A planetary system is a set of gravitationally bound non-stellar bodies in or out of orbit around a star or star system.Generally speaking, systems with one or more planets constitute a planetary system, although such systems may also consist of bodies such as dwarf planets, asteroids, natural satellites, meteoroids, comets, planetesimals [1] [2] and ...