Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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.
A hydrogen gas halo three times the size of the Sun was detected by Skylab around Comet Kohoutek in the 1970s. [18] SOHO detected a hydrogen gas halo bigger than 1 AU in radius around Comet Hale–Bopp. [19] Water emitted by the comet is broken up by sunlight, and the hydrogen in turn emits ultra-violet light. [20]
The nucleus of Halley's Comet is also an extremely dark black. Scientists think that the surface of the comet, and perhaps most other comets, is covered with a black crust of dust and rock that covers most of the ice. These comets release gas only when holes in this crust rotate toward the Sun, exposing the interior ice to the warming sunlight.
But as the comet, composed of ice, frozen gases and rock, ... is expected to peak on the night of November 4 into the early morning of November 5 and also has a comet for a parent body called ...
Comet Holmes (17P/Holmes) in 2007, showing blue ionized gas tail on right Animation of a comet's tail. 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.
Evidence may exist for a comet shockwave hitting Earth after the last ice age. We don’t have the woolly mammoth with us any longer, but we aren’t sure exactly why.
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 ...
This is a list of comets (bodies that travel in elliptical, parabolic, and sometimes hyperbolic orbits and display a tail behind them) listed by type. Comets are sorted into four categories: periodic comets (e.g. Halley's Comet), non-periodic comets (e.g. Comet Hale–Bopp), comets with no meaningful orbit (the Great Comet of 1106), and lost comets (), displayed as either P (periodic), C (non ...