Comets are huge chunks of dusty ice in space. They have their own orbit course and it's very rare for humans to see one. Their orbit course is very long and it would usually be around the sun, because of the star's strong gravitational pull. Comets are basically made of ice, dust, and gases. Comets have a carbon-filled layer on the outside that protects the inside. You can call them dusty snowballs if you want. If one was ever to appear in our solar system at night, than, with telescopes, we could see a tail, called a coma, at its end. That's because of the sun's radiation on the comet, heating up its gases and ice, making it evaporate. Chunks of rock and dust close to the surface of the comet, begins to detach from its place and falls out. Vapor, dust, and the rocks cloud behind the nucleus, the comet, and follows it in its path.
Astronomers believe that comets come from the Oort Cloud and the scattered disc. Long term orbit comets, comets whose orbit period is 200 years or more, come from the Oort Cloud (the name was named after the Danish astronomer named Jan Oort) and short term orbit comets, comets whose orbit period is 200 years or less, come from the scattered disc. Jan Oort hypothesized that there is a cloud of ice way beyond Pluto and it contains millions if not billions of comets. The scattered disc is a place where many icy dwarf planets, such as Pluto, populate. Astronomers believe that comets originated from the scattered disc due to all of the icy materials and substances in that place.
Halley's Comet |
Jan Oort is Dutch and not Danish.
ReplyDeleteNeil Tyson keeps making the same mistake.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Oort