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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.
Comet orbits had been determined quite precisely, yet comets were at times recovered "off-schedule," by as much as days. Early comets could be explained by a "resisting medium"—such as "the aether", or the cumulative action of meteoroids against the front of the comet(s). [citation needed] But comets could return both early and late. Whipple ...
Cometary pieces are mostly made of ice and dust and are so small that they completely burn up before hitting the ground. On a good year, you may see between 10-20 Leonid meteor streaks per hour.
Periodic comets usually have elongated elliptical orbits, and usually return to the vicinity of the Sun after a number of decades. The official names of non-periodic comets begin with a "C"; the names of periodic comets begin with "P" or a number followed by "P". Comets that have been lost or disappeared have names with a "D". Comets whose ...
The celestial object comes from the Oort Cloud, “a mostly spherical collection of comets barely bound to our Solar System thousands of times (farther) away from the Sun than we are,” said ...
A comet is a small Solar System body that orbits the Sun and (at least occasionally) exhibits a coma (or atmosphere) and/or a tail—both primarily from the effects of solar radiation upon the comet's nucleus, which itself is a minor body composed of rock, dust, and ice.
The Halloween comet, C/2024 S1, was a member of the Kreutz family of comets, a population of mostly tiny comet fragments originating from a single parent object that fell apart near the sun ...
The following list is of comets with very long orbital periods, defined as between 200 and 1000 years.These comets come from the Kuiper belt and scattered disk, beyond the orbit of Pluto, with possible origins in the Oort cloud for many.