COMETS: DIRTY SNOWBALLS

Comets, like asteroids, are also left over from the formation of solar system.
Unlike asteroids, comets are composed of ices (water, ammonia, methane, carbon
dioxide, and carbon monoxide) that hold together small pieces of rocky and metallic
materials, thus the nickname “dirty snowballs”.

Many comets travel in very elongated orbits that carry them far beyond Pluto. A
few short-period comets (less than 200 years), such as Halley’s comet, make regular
encounters with the inner solar system.

As the comet approaches the Sun, solar energy begins to vaporize the ices,
producing a glowing head called the coma. The tail of a comet points away from the
Sun in a slightly curved manner. Two solar forces are known to contribute to this
formation: radiation pressure and solar wind. Radiation pressure pushes dust
particles away from the coma. Solar wind is responsible for moving ionized gases,
particularly carbon monoxide. Sometimes a single tail composed of both dust and
ionized gases is produced, but often two tails are observed.

Most comets are found in two regions of the outer solar system. The
short-period comets are thought to orbit beyond Neptune in a region called Kuiper belt.
Unlike Kuiper belt comets, long-period comets have orbits that are not confined to the
plane of the solar system. These comets appear to be distributed in all directions from
the Sun, forming a spherical shell around the solar system, called the Oort cloud. The
most famous short-period comet is Halley’s Comet. Its orbital period averages 76 years,
and every one of its 29 appearances since 240 B.C has been recorded by Chinese
astronomers.
 In 1997, the comet Hale-Bopp made for spectacular viewing around the globe.
As comets go, the nucleus of Hale-Bopp was unusually large, about 40 km in diameter.
The bluish gas-tail is composed of positively charged ions, and it points almost directly
away from the Sun. The brighter tail is composed of dust and other rocky debris.
Because the rocky material is more massive than the ionized gases, it is less affected by
the solar wind and follows a different trajectory away from the comet.