Comets - Farooq

- Comets are sometimes called dirty snowballs or icy mudballs and are ionized charged
particles.
- They are made up of both ices (water and frozen gases), dust and gravel.
- Parts of the comet:
- nucleus: relatively solid and stable, mostly ice and gas with a small amount of dust
and other solids;
- coma: dense cloud of water, carbon dioxide and other neutral gases sublimed from
the nucleus;
- hydrogen cloud: huge (millions of km in diameter) but very sparse envelope of
neutral hydrogen;
- dust tail: up to 10 million km long composed of smoke-sized dust particles driven off
the nucleus by escaping gases; this is the most prominent part of a comet to the
unaided eye. Has a very low density.
- ion tail: as much as several hundred million km long composed of plasma and laced
with rays and streamers caused by interactions with the solar wind.
- Solar wind passes through a comet and the ionized charge forms the trail gas behind
it.
- Comets tail can have different colors
such as blue and green. It depends
on the gases contained in it. The
green one has carbon dioxide while
the blue one contains carbon
monoxide.
- Comets are invisible unless they are
near the sun.
- Short period comets are comets
having orbital periods of less than
200 years. They are on the same
plane and direction as the planet.
- Long period comets are comets having orbital periods of more than 200 years. They
can be anywhere in the sky and can go in different directions.
- Comets die and disappear when they get close to the sun. The closer it is the faster
its gasses evaporate and therefor making it smaller and over time disappearing.