Comets
The first written records of date back to nearly 3,000 years ago from China and Europe. The accounts of these were believed to be the causes of terrible events that occurred afterwards. In more recent times, however, astronomers have found out what they really are.
A comet is basically a mixture of ices, from both water and frozen gases, and dust. They have also been given the names “dirty snowballs” or “icy mudballs.” The typical comet is less that 10 kilometers across. They spend most of their time frozen solid in the outer parts of our solar system. are composed of five parts: the nucleus, coma, hydrogen cloud, dust tail, and ion tail.
The nucleus is pretty solid and stable, ...
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and the gas shoots outward; this is referred to by astronomers as a jet. Dust that had been mixed in with the gas is also pushed out, and as more jets appear, a small gas and dust shell forms around the nucleus, and this is called the coma.
The coma, also called the head, is a dense cloud of water, carbon dioxide and other gases and comes off of the nucleus. They can be several thousand kilometers in diameter, depending on the comet’s distance from the sun and the size of the nucleus. The size of the nucleus is important because since large nuclei have a greater surface area facing the sun, which is the side that is the warmest, hence the side where most of the jets are coming from, it means more jets and greater amounts of gas and dust go into the coma. Even though the coma can get to be very large, its size can actually decrease about the time it crosses the orbit of Mars. At this distance the particles that drift out from the sun act as a powerful wind which blows the gas and ...
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to the direction of the Sun. The color of it, through a spectrum, is mostly blue. The reason why the tail is ionized is because of solar wind. Solar wind, which flows at about 400 kilometers per second, is filled with charged particles that are around the solar magnetic field. The gases in the tail are ionized by the process of “photoionization of the neutral molecules under the action of the solar ultraviolet radiation”, or “under the action of the solar wind by a phenomenon where a proton removes an electron from an atom.” The speed at which the ions are moving is what causes the tail to be straight. The light from the tail is emitted by “fluorescence,” which is a particle of solar wind ...
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Comets. (2004, October 7). Retrieved December 23, 2024, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Comets/15513
"Comets." Essayworld.com. Essayworld.com, 7 Oct. 2004. Web. 23 Dec. 2024. <http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Comets/15513>
"Comets." Essayworld.com. October 7, 2004. Accessed December 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Comets/15513.
"Comets." Essayworld.com. October 7, 2004. Accessed December 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Comets/15513.
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