Astronomy For Beginners

A blog to indulge two greatest interests - amateur astronomy and the internet.

Comet Facts

Fact 1: A comet is a conglomerate of particles bound together by ice (not necessarily H2O water ice, it could be dry ice.

Fact 2: When a comet approaches the sun the ice melts and releases the particles from the main body in a very long tail that can stretch for millions of miles.

Fact 3: The tail of a comet always points away from the sun. The solar wind is responsible for this effect.

As the picture below shows, there are in fact two tails, both curved, and they are 30 MILLION kilometres long. That's a lot of fine particles. The theory is that the solar wind is responsible for the blue gas and gravity alone for the larger particles.