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Asteroids and comets have a few things in common. They are both celestial bodies orbiting our Sun, and they both can have unusual orbits, sometimes straying close to Earth or the other planets. They are both "leftovers" - made from materials from the formation of our Solar System 4.5 billion years ago.

While asteroids consist of metals and rocky material, comets are made up of ice, dust, rocky materials and organic compounds.

When comets get closer to the Sun, they lose material with each orbit because some of their ice melts and vaporizes. Asteroids typically remain solid, even when near the Sun.

When comets approach the Sun, some of their ices melt. This causes another notable difference between asteroids and comets: comets have "tails" while asteroids generally don't. When the ices in comets begin to melt and other materials vaporize from the heat from the Sun, this forms a glowing halo that extends outward from the comet as it sails through space.

There is a big difference when it comes to numbers… although there is a caveat in that we don't know precisely how many asteroids OR comets there are in our Solar System, since lots have never been seen. Astronomers have discovered millions of asteroids - some as small as dust particles and others measuring hundreds of kilometers across (width). But as of this writing, astronomers have found only about 4,000 comets.

[However, some estimates say there could be one hundred billion comets in the Oort cloud.]

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9y ago

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