What caused Halleys comet tail?

Answer 1

We don't know. I've read estimates that Halley's Comet is probably large enough to survive another ten million years or so.

The problem, of course, is that a comet is like a "dirty snowball" in composition. Rocks and dust, loosely bound together by ice. While out in the depths of space, the snowball is perfectly stable. But when the comet approaches the Sun, the ice begins to vaporize and the vapor carries away some of the dust. This forms the tail of the comet.

With each approach, the comet becomes smaller and less stable. Some comets experience explosions, when a pocket of vaporized ice is trapped and then bursts carrying chunks of rock and dust away. We cannot predict when that will happen to Halley's Comet, but we know that someday, it WILL.

And comets do occasionally collide with things; things like Earth, or Mars, or Jupiter, or asteroids. A lot could happen.

Answer 2

Halley's comet tail is caused by the solar wind and radiation pressure from the Sun, which push the comet's gas and dust particles away from the nucleus to form a long, glowing tail. This tail always points away from the Sun due to these forces.

Answer 3

As the comet approaches the sun, it gets heated up, and its surface begins to turn into a gas (sublimates). The gas then escapes from the comet, and with enough force to blow away some dust and small rocks from the comet. This dust and gas is what makes the tail and also why the tail always points away from the sun (even when the comet is running from the sun, so the tail is in frount of the comet).

Answer 4

Halley's comet takes 76 years to orbit the Sun, so it is in the neighbourhood of Earth for about a year or so.

However, the comet was originally from the Oort Cloud, an enormous shell of icy debris where most comets come from, which stretches halfway to the nearest star. Nobody knows exactly where Halley's comet came from, but if it came from the outermost part of the Oort Cloud, it would have taken millions of years to fall inwards towards the planets. Once it swung around the Sun, it probably made a close pass by one of the giant planets, which altered its orbit from its previous millions-of-years long loop down to its current 76-year journey.

Answer 5

76 years

Answer76 years AnswerIt depends how many years have passed since it last passed.

(EXAMPLE, If it was 2059 it would take about 2-3 years.)

The first 2 r right every 75 or 76 or mayebe 77 but the main anser is 76

for the kids who have to do research on this halley is a short comet

Answer 6

We can be pretty certain that Halley's Comet has been observed every 76 years since about the 3rd century BC, and there's no reason to believe that it hasn't been around for thousands of years before then. We really have no idea when Comet Halley's first pass was.

Looking forward, we can be pretty certain that its orbit is stable for the next few dozen passes; after that, there may be increasing call to remove this hazard to astrogation from the space lanes and place it in the Smithsonian.

Answer 7

It takes Halley's Comet 74 to 76 earth years to complete an orbit of the Sun.

It can be influenced by passing the large outer planets, so its revolutions are

not always the same duration.

Answer 8

The longest comet tail ever seen was the from the comet Hyakutake and measured 570 million km or 354 million miles. This is approximately 3.8 times the distance between the Earth and the Sun.

Answer 9

Halley's comet tail stretches for millions of miles!

Answer 10

It cannot be exactly defined but it is believed that the tail may well extend to beyond 100 million kilometers.