comet

     

Comets are small Solar System boies that orbit the Sun and, when close enough to the Sun, exhibit a visible coma (or atmosphere) and/or a tail — both primarily from the effects of solar radiation upon the comet's nucleus. Comet nuclei are themselves loose collections of ice, dust and small rocky particles, measuring a few kilometres or tens of kilometres across.

Trivia about comet

  • Most of the meteors in a meteor shower are debris left behind by one of these tailed bodies
  • Hyakutake, one of these, has a 360-million-mile-long tail
  • One of these seen in 1769 had a tail estimated to be about 40 million miles long
  • Type of tailed object that hit Jupiter in 1994 & perhaps hit Earth in 65 million B.C., dooming the dinosaurs
  • Mark your calendar--Encke's one of these has a mere 3.3-year orbital period (Halley's needs 76)
  • The name of this kind of celestial body comes from the Greek for "wearing long hair"; guess that refers to its tail
  • On Jan. 2, 2004 the Stardust probe collected dust samples from Wild 2, one of these, & is returning them to Earth
  • As they approach the sun, some of these develop tails as long as 100 million miles
  • A cleanser from Prestige Brands
  • In 1985 Giacobini-Zinner became the first one of these to be intercepted by a spacecraft
  • Discovered in 1858, Donati, one of these, developed a curved dust tail & 2 thin gas tails
  • Shoemaker-Levy 9, one of these, hit Jupiter in 1994, giving us an idea of what might happen to Earth
  • (Cheryl of the Clue Crew reports from the JPL in Pasadena) Scientists at JPL are learning to navigate a vessel close to this type of celestial body, Latin for "long-haired star"
  • In August 1986, a 24-year-old Cal Tech student discovered one of these, so it was named for her
  • In 1993 Eugene & Carolyn Shoemaker & David Levy discovered a highly fragmented one of these
  • Last seen in 1997, another 2,400 years will pass before the next visiti of Hale-Bopp, one of these
  • Santa's reindeer promoted by Josephine the plumber
  • The source of the Perseid meteor shower is one of these objects named for Lewis Swift Horace Tuttle
  • One of these discovered by Giovanni Donati in 1858 has a tail about 45 million miles long
  • The tail of this body is formed when ice turns into gas as it gets closer to the sun
  • In April 1997 one of these named Hale-Bopp will be among the brightest objects in the night sky
  • In TV ads in the '60s, Josephine the Plumber used this "out of this world" cleanser
  • In 2005 there were fireworks on the 4th of July -- 83 million miles away, as the Deep Impact probe hit one of these
  • A coma is found around the head of one of these, which also takes its name from the Greek for "hair"
  • On July 4, 2005 the probe Deep Impact blasted a crater in Tempel 1, one of these celestial travelers