Why are there no comets close to the Sun?

Answer 1

Comets are composed of volatile materials such as ice, dust, and rocky debris. When they come close to the Sun, the heat causes these materials to vaporize and form a glowing coma and tail. This process, known as outgassing, leads to the gradual disintegration of the comet. Therefore, comets tend to stay in the outer regions of the solar system where they can remain intact until they approach the Sun.

Answer 2

Bad premise; MOST comets are invisibly dim, often just barely reaching a threshold of visibility. It's the rare and unusual comet that is so spectacularly bright. There were over a dozen comets seen in 2010; did you see any of them? I believe that the brightest barely reached 6th magnitude.

Comets glow by reflected sunlight. The nucleus of the comet isn't very spectacular, but the heat from the Sun will cause frozen gasses to sublimate (become vapor again) and carry dust away from the nucleus. This spreads out a lot in the "solar wind", and the Sun's light reflects from that. To become a major comet, it must be fairly big or fairly close, or both.

Answer 3

We can see comets because of their long glowing tail and bright fuzzy head. But the glowing tail and fuzzy head are actually just a little bit of scattered dust, carried away from the coal-black head of the comet by the melting of the frozen gasses that it is made of.

Far from the Sun, the gas stays frozen, and the comet is invisible. It is only as it begins to approach the Sun (and "approach" only relatively, since many comets become visible beyond the orbit of Jupiter!) that the frozen gas begins to sublimate away and carry the dust out into space. This is when it begins to reflect the Sun's light, becoming visible to astronomers and (hopefully) to us here on Earth.

This also means that every periodic comet will eventually burn out; the supply of gassy ices that stream away from the head of the comet is finite, and is never replenished. When the supply of ice is all melted, the dust and rocks from the comet's head will become just another bunch of meteoroids invisibly falling through space.

Answer 4

The orbit of most comets is significantly elliptical.

It seems that as the comet nears the sun, the attraction between the two bodies greatly increases, and therefore, acceleration occurs such that the speed of the comet's approach to the sun greatly increases. Nevertheless, being quite small, it quickly rounds the sun while at close distance and is flung like the recoiling of an elastic band back out into space (possibly assisted by some other external attraction in space).

It would seem that, nevertheless, the attraction of gravity between the sun and comet causes the inertial departure to eventually slow down: 'escape inertia' is overcome, and the body commences on its acceleratory path back towards the sun again.

Answer 5

Comets don't face anything. The comet's tail, however, will go away from the Sun, because that's the direction the solar wind blows: away from the Sun.

Comets don't face anything. The comet's tail, however, will go away from the Sun, because that's the direction the solar wind blows: away from the Sun.

Comets don't face anything. The comet's tail, however, will go away from the Sun, because that's the direction the solar wind blows: away from the Sun.

Comets don't face anything. The comet's tail, however, will go away from the Sun, because that's the direction the solar wind blows: away from the Sun.

Answer 6

Comets are composed mostly of various kinds of ice (which is to say, frozen liquids and gases, not just water ice) and when they approach the sun parts of them will boil away, which produces the distinctive comet's tail. Farther from the sun they have no tail, and remain frozen.

Answer 7

comets are more clearly visible when they approach the sun because they release vast clouds of gas and dust as they approach the sun, causing them to heat up and form a bright and long tails, often millions of kilometers long...

Answer 8

When comets gets closer to the heat of the Sun, they start to evaporate. gas and dust form long tails that point in the direction of the strongest gravity field. we can see the suns light reflect from the matter that makes up the tail. These tails can be millions of miles long and don't travel in the wake of the comet.

Answer 9

The closer it gets to the sun, the stronger the sun's gravitational pull on the comet.

Answer 10

Because the sun melts or knocks off pieces of the comet once it gets close enough, and the trail of debris is very reflective, giving the comet its distinctive look.