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Comets Candy Long

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Composition Comets contain dust, ice, carbon dioxide, ammonia, methane and more. Some researchers think comets might have originally brought some of the water and organic molecules to Earth that now make up lift here.

When they are near the Sun and active, comets have several distinct parts: nucleus, coma, hydrogen cloud, dust tail and ion tail.

Comet Life Cycle -Departure Some comets are not bound to the sun, on orbits that take them out of the solar system. -Extinction Comets lose ice and dust each time they come near the sun, leaving behind trails of debris. Eventually, they can lose all their ices, with some turning into fragile, inactive objects similar to asteroids. -Breakup Other comets, upon losing all their ices, break up and dissipate into clouds of dust. -Collisions The orbits comets take sometimes end with them colliding with planets and their moons. Many impact craters seen in the solar system were caused by such collisions.

Physical Characteristics The solid nucleus or core of a comet consists mostly of ice and dust coated with dark organic material, with the ice composed mainly of frozen water but perhaps other frozen substances as well, such as ammonia, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and methane. The nucleus might have a small rocky core.ice and dust coated with dark organic materialcomposed mainly of frozen water

Orbital Characteristics Asteroids classify comets based on the durations of their orbits around the sun. Short-period comets need roughly 200 years or less to complete one orbit, long-period comets take more than 200 years, and single-apparition comets are not bound to the sun, on orbits that take them out of the solar system. Recently, scientist have also discovered comets in the main asteroid belt — these main-belt comets might be a key source of water for the inner terrestrial planets.based on the durations of their orbitsare not bound to the sunmain-belt comets

History In antiquity, comets inspired both awe and alarm, "hairy stars" resembling fiery swords that appeared unpredictably in the sky. Often, comets seemed to be omens of doom — the most ancient known mythology, the Babylonian "Epic of Gilgamesh," described fire, brimstone, and flood with the arrival of a comet, and Emperor Nero of Rome saved himself from the "curse of the comet" by having all possible successors to his throne executed. This fear was not just limited to the distant past — in 1910, people in Chicago sealed their windows to protect themselves from what they thought was the comet’s poisonous tail. awe and alarmhairy starsthe Babylonian "Epic of Gilgamesh,"Emperor Nero of Rome

For centuries, scientists thought comets traveled in the Earth's atmosphere, but in 1577, observations made by Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe revealed they actually traveled far beyond the moon. Isaac Newton later discovered that comets move in elliptical, oval-shaped orbits around the Sun, and correctly predicted that they could return again and again.scientists thought comets traveled in the Earth's atmosphere A number of recent missions have ventured to comets. NASA's Deep Impact collided an impactor into Comet Tempel 1 in 2005 and recorded the dramatic explosion that revealed the interior composition and structure of the nucleus. In 2009, NASA announced samples the Stardust mission returned from Comet Wild 2 revealed a building block of life. The European Space Agency's Rosetta is scheduled to orbit Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014 and deploy a probe to make the first landing on a comet.collided an impactor into Comet Tempel 1 in 2005a building block of lifeorbit Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014the first landing on a comet

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10 Need-to-Know Things About Comets: 1. If the sun were as tall as a typical front door, Earth would be the size of a nickel, dwarf planet Pluto would be the size of a head of a pin and the largest Kuiper Belt comet (about 100 km across, which is about one twentieth the size of Pluto) would only be about the size of a grain of dust. Short-period comets (comets that orbit the sun in less than 200 years) reside in the icy region known as the Kuiper Belt beyond the orbit of Neptune from about 30 to 55 AU. Long-period comets (comets with long, unpredictable orbits) originate in the far-off reaches of the Oort Cloud, which is five thousand to 100 thousand AUs from the sun. Days on comets vary. One day on comet Halley varies between 2.2 to 7.4 Earth days (the time it takes for comet Halley to rotate or spin once). Comet Halley makes a complete orbit around the sun (a year in this comet's time) in 76 Earth years. Comets are cosmic snowballs of frozen gases, rock and dust. A comet warms up as it nears the sun and develops an atmosphere, or coma. The coma may be hundreds of thousands of kilometers in diameter. Comets do not have moons. Comets do not have rings. More than 20 missions have explored comets from a variety of viewpoints. Comets may not be able to support life themselves, but they may have brought water and organic compounds -- the building blocks of life -- through collisions with Earth and other bodies in our solar system. Comet Halley makes an appearance in the Bayeux Tapestry from the year 1066, which chronicles the overthrow of King Harold by William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings.Bayeux Tapestry

Famous Comets Halley's Comet is likely the most famous comet in the world, even depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry that chronicled the Battle of Hastings of It becomes visible to the naked eye every 76 years when it nears the sun. When Halley's Comet zoomed near Earth in 1986, five spacecraft flew past it and gathered unprecedented details, coming close enough to study its nucleus, which is normally concealed by the comet's coma. The roughly potato-shaped, nine-mile-long (15 km) contains equal part ice and dust, with some 80 percent of the ice made of water and about 15 percent of it consisting of frozen carbon monoxide. Researchers believe other comets are chemically similar to Halley's Comet. The nucleus of Halley's Comet was unexpectedly extremely dark black — its surface, and perhaps those of most others, is apparently covered with a black crust of dust over most of the ice, and it only releases gas when holes in this crust expose ice to the sun. depicted in the Bayeux Tapestrybecomes visible to the naked eye

Learn more RELATED: See Asteroid Facts our overview of Solar System Facts or learn more about the Solar System Planets.Asteroid Facts Solar System Factslearn Solar System Planets

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