What is a long term comet?

Answer 1

A long term comet is a comet whose final orbital`s path take more than two-hundred years. An example is Hale- Bopp`s comet that had an orbit of 4,200 years. The following is a general overview about comets:-

The center of the comet , then nucleus, is very smal compared to the rest of the comet, and has a very small diameter. The nucleus is composed or rocks and ices, and a comet usually has no value, or " dead" as they call it, if its ices melt.

The other parts of the comet only exist when the comet is near the sun.The sun`s solar energy produces heat the melts the ice down, forming the glowing " head " , or comet. The ices of the comet are made of various molecules (such as carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and water), and they weigh differently, so, some can escape the nucleus' weak gravity more easily, while others cannot.. Therefore, another minor feature of the coma is the Hydrogen Cloud, which forms the outer part of the coma.

Finally, the tail. Most comets usually have two tails, where one exceeds the other in brightness.. The tails form as a result of the sun's solar wind - the stream of charged particles that emanate from the sun. The solar wind forces gas and dust out from the comet and forces the material into very narrow (relative to their length) tails. The tails always point away from the sun.

The gas and dust form separate tails due to the charge of their constituents. The dust is not highly charged, and so forms a bent tail that slightly lags behind pointing directly away from the sun; its color is yellow because it reflects the light of the yellow sun. The gas tail is much more highly charged, and so the solar wind acts to funnel it much more effectively than it does the dust cloud; its color is blue due to molecules that make it up.

Due to the nature of how the tails form -- material being blown off of the comet - the tails are how comets loose the bulk of their mass. The material usually dissipates after several hundred years, but before that happens, the material usually will continue in the orbit of the comet. If the Earth plows through this, we see a meteor shower.