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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. These phenomena are due to the effects of ...
Observational history of comets. The Book of Miracles (Augsburg, 16th century). Comets have been observed by humanity for thousands of years, but only in the past few centuries have they been studied as astronomical phenomena. Before modern times, great comets caused worldwide fear, considered bad omens foreboding disaster and turmoil, for ...
Comet Hale–Bopp. Comet Hale–Bopp (formally designated C/1995 O1) is a long-period comet that was one of the most widely observed of the 20th century and one of the brightest seen for many decades. [citation needed] Alan Hale and Thomas Bopp discovered Comet Hale–Bopp separately on July 23, 1995, before it became visible to the naked eye.
Halley's Comet is the only known short-period comet that is consistently visible to the naked eye from Earth, [ 16 ] appearing every 72–80 years. [ 17 ] It last appeared in the inner parts of the Solar System in 1986 and will next appear in mid-2061. Officially designated 1P/Halley, it is also commonly called Comet Halley, or sometimes simply ...
Diagram of a comet showing the dust tail, dust trail (or anti-tail), and ionized gas tail, which is formed by the solar wind flow. 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 ...
A newly discovered green comet will soon make its first approach to Earth in about 50,000 years — and it could be viewable with the naked eye.. Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF), discovered last March, made ...
Comet Hyakutake (formally designated C/1996 B2 (Hyakutake)) is a comet discovered on 31 January 1996. [1] It was dubbed the Great Comet of 1996; its passage to within 0.1 AU (15 Gm) of the Earth on 25 March was one of the closest cometary approaches of the previous 200 years. Reaching an apparent visual magnitude of zero and spanning nearly 80 ...
An icy comet that will take 80,000 years to return – if it survives the trip – is streaking across the sky this October. ... Where did the comet come from? The comet, also designated C/2023 A3 ...