Comets

Did you know that comets are icy travelers that hold clues about the early formation of our solar system?

They are often described as dirty snowballs made of ice, dust, and rock. Their solid core, the nucleus, contains frozen water and gases.

These comets travel in long, elliptical orbits around the Sun. Their journeys take them from the cold outer regions of the solar system to areas near the Sun.

In the cold regions, their ice remains frozen, but as they approach the Sun, heat causes ice to release gas and dust, forming a glowing cloud called a coma around the nucleus and creating a bright tail.

Did you know the comet’s tail always points away from the Sun? This happens because the Sun’s heat and solar wind push the gas and dust from the comet backward. Some comets, like Hale-Bopp, even have two tails: a dust tail and a faint ion tail.

There are billions of comets orbiting our Sun in the Kuiper Belt and even farther out in the Oort cloud.