Artist’s illustration of a comet soaring through space.
Comets are cosmic snowballs, the frozen leftovers from the formation of the solar system composed of frozen gases, dust, and rock. They range in size from a few miles to tens of miles wide, but as they orbit closer to the Sun, they heat up and spew gases and dust into a glowing head that can be larger than a planet. This material forms a tail that stretches millions of miles.
The following infographic shows the main components of a comet – nucleus, coma, hydrogen envelope, dust, and plasmaPlasma is one of the four fundamental states of matter, along with solid, liquid, and gas. It is an ionized gas consisting of positive ions and free electrons. It was first described by chemist Irving Langmuir in the 1920s.” data-gt-translate-attributes=”[{“attribute”:”data-cmtooltip”, “format”:”html”}]”>plasma tails – indicating their composition, relative sizes, and location.
Below that, the two main reservoirs of comets in the Solar System are shown: the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud.
To serve as examples, the orbits of three famous comets are also included: two short-period comets, 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko (the target of ESA’s Rosetta mission) and 1P/Halley, and a long-period comet, Siding Spring, which reached its closest approach to the Sun in late 2014.
The main components of a comet – nucleus, coma, hydrogen envelope, dust, and plasma tails – indicating their composition, relative sizes, and location. The diagrams are representative and not to scale. Credit: ESA
Source: SciTechDaily
