Comets

Comet Temple-Tuttle has an eccentricity of approximately 0.96. This means its orbit is highly elongated, with the comet coming close to the sun at perihelion and traveling far out into the solar system at aphelion.

Most comets move much faster than the Earth's velocity around the Sun, which is about eighteen miles per second. Halley's comet makes a wide loop every seventy-six years. Its farthest point from the Sun is beyond Neptune. When it is that far out, it parades through space very slowly; an airplane could probably keep up with it. As the comet moves in, it picks up speed. By the time it passes the Earth, it is sprinting along at close to forty miles per second.

Same as any other comet: away from the Sun.

Same as any other comet: away from the Sun.

Same as any other comet: away from the Sun.

Same as any other comet: away from the Sun.

The piece of a comet that trails behind it is called a tail. Cometary tails are composed of dust and ionized gases that become illuminated by the Sun, creating the characteristic bright streak visible from Earth.

No one knows. Comets are hard to see coming. They aren't visible until they come in past the orbits of the outer planets. We wouldn't get a lot of warning time, not that we could do very much to get out of the way or modify the orbit of the comet so it would miss us.

First of all, its not the Christmas Star. You arereferring to the star that appeared when Jesus was born. The reason its not the Christmas Star is because Jesus WAS NOT born on Christmas. They have rolled back the stars to the year He was born and shown that the constellation Ares (somehow the constellation of the Jews) was overhead and the star was inside that constellation (not one of the stars making up the constellation, just a bright light within) and that is what lead the three men to the city. By simple reasoning you can figure out that Jesus was not born in the winter because it says as plain as day, the shepherds were tending their flocks. Shepherds don't tend flocks in the winter. The reason that Christmas is on the 25th of December is because that was the Pagan holiday of the son. So in order to help convert more Pagans to Christianity they made a major holiday on the same day since everyone was used to celebrating on that day anyways. Any church official who says that Jesus was born on Christmas is either a retard or he is trying to sell you something because the book that they believe in has proof that is didn't happen that way. By rolling back the stars to the year He was born, they have found that He was born in April. I believe it was around the 14th or 17th.

About 6 or 7, with Hailies conet appering in 2061

Comet West was remarkable in its brightness and tail formation, providing astronomers with valuable data to study the composition and behavior of comets. It helped to confirm that comets are made of ice and dust, and its disintegration provided insights into the dynamics of comets in the solar system. Overall, Comet West contributed to advancing our understanding of comets' role in the formation and evolution of the solar system.

That period of time is called a " sidereal day ". That's not the period of time for your clock
or wristwatch to make a complete rotation.

The earth's rotation is 23hours 56minutes and roughly 4seconds.

A planet or comet's orbit that is farthest from the sun is called the aphelion. This is the point where they are at their greatest distance from the sun in their elliptical orbit.

The dust particles in the coma of comet 1P/Halley were made of diverse materials including silicates, carbon, and metals. These particles traveled at high speeds, impacting the probes with enough force to cause damage to their instruments and outer surfaces. The abrasive nature of these particles also caused wear and tear on the probe's components.

The Coma is the fuzzy outer layer of a comet.

Generally asteroids move more slowly because they are in relatively stable orbits. Meteors can come in at any velocity, depending on their source. Comets travel very rapidly when close to the Sun, but come almost to a standstill at the outermost point in their orbits.

Meteors from "meteor showers" generally come from the decay of comets, and are traveling at cometary speeds. Recent radar measurements of recent meteor showers tracked the incoming meteors at 130,000 miles per hour.

Halley's Comet was not founded by a person, but rather named after the astronomer Edmond Halley, who calculated its orbit and predicted its return in 1758.

Short-period comets originate from the Kuiper Belt, a region beyond Neptune filled with icy debris, or from the scattered disk, which is a distant region beyond the Kuiper Belt. These comets have orbits that last less than 200 years and are affected by the gravity of the outer planets.

The Oort Cloud is a distant region in the solar system composed of icy bodies, including frozen comets. These comets have highly eccentric orbits that occasionally bring them closer to the Sun, resulting in them becoming active and displaying a coma and tail as they release gas and dust.

Comets in the Kuiper belt are believed to have originated in the outer regions of the solar system, beyond the giant planets like Neptune. Some scientists think they may have formed close to their current location, while others suggest they migrated there from even more distant regions.

No. A comets tail is created when water evaporates off the comet, this can only happen when the comet is near enough to the sun for water to evaporate. The tail of a comet does not follow behind it but always points away from the sun because of the solar wind.

The statement is utterly and completely false,

and without a redeeming shred of truth.

Yes, spacecrafts have visited both asteroids and comets. Some notable missions include NASA's OSIRIS-REx which visited the asteroid Bennu and JAXA's Hayabusa2 mission which visited the asteroid Ryugu. Additionally, the European Space Agency's Rosetta mission visited and landed on the comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.

Edmund Halley was the fellow who first realized that the historical accounts of comets seemed to show that they were not solitary events; that they came back into view on a regular schedule. Examining the records, Halley calculated the probable orbit of the comet and concluded that the comet of 1682 was probably the same comet that had been seen in 1607 and before that in 1531. Halley predicted that the comet would once again be visible in 1758. When it was observed in December, 1758, it was dubbed "Halley's Comet", a title it retains.

To astronomers, Halley's Comet is called "1P/Halley"; the 1P indicates that in the catalog of comets, this is the first entry and that it is "Periodic".

There have been some large ones in history, such as Comet Hale-Bopp, which was 60 miles in diameter. It was a brilliant comet, the biggest one in my lifetime that I have seen. However, it was clear across the Solar System. If it had been near us, like Comet Hyakutake in 1996 at 9 million miles, it would have been an incredible sight.

The asteroid Chiron is about the same size, and it has shown signs of developing a coma. If so, then Chiron is another comet. But it is also a straggler Kuiper Belt object (KBO), which makes one think of the other KBOs. They are icy worlds, and if one were placed in the inner solar system, the ices off the world would stream off to produce a comet. So does that mean that all KBOs are comets? Here we go with Pluto again. The International Astronomical Union has ruled that it is not a planet, but rather a KBO and a "dwarf planet". Could it really be a comet? If Pluto got into the inner Solar System, it would be one big whopper of a comet, perhaps. The same holds for Eris, too, and the other large KBOs. But this leads to the question: what is a comet anyway?

To me a comet is any body that produces a bright center and a faint to bright tail trailing it, and lasting at least an hour (to exclude meteors). The bodies that produce the traditional comets we observe are much like small asteroids or KBOs. They are solid bodies. The comets differ in that they have icy surfaces, unlike the rocky surfaces of Mars-Jupiter asteroids. So to me anything that is capable of producing such a brilliant tail in the sky is a comet. That makes Eris and Pluto comets. So is Eris the largest comet?

No. Recently Astronomy magazine reported an even larger comet. This one is larger than Jupiter. That's correct, larger than Jupiter. They reported that a large body, TrES-4, orbits the star GSC 02620-00648 in Hercules. This body is considerably bigger than Jupiter, maybe twice as big. But it is less massive. Bodies that are between 1 and 80 Jupiters in mass are all of about the same size, with the difference being their density. But this one is considerably larger. It must be a puffball of a planet, with gases on the surface that are heated up by the central star and blown away by the stellar wind, to produce an enormous tail. To me, TrES-4, although it is a gas-giant planet, is also a comet. A really huge comet! But is this the largest comet? No.

There is one much larger than that one, and this object has been known since the 1600s. It is a favorite with amateur astronomers. It is Mira, the wonderful variable star in Cetus. This star varies in magnitude from 2.5 (about the same as Phecda in the Big Dipper) to 10 (a faint dot in an 8-inch telescope), over an irregular period that averages 331 days. It has long been known to be a red giant star about 1.2 times as massive as the Sun, and as large as Mars' orbit. The maxima and minima have been studiously observed since the 1600s. Astronomers have discovered something new with Mira. It is producing a tail in ultraviolet light that makes it look like a comet. If it looks like a comet, then it is one. To me this star qualifies as a comet, as it consists of a bright object with a long tail behind it. The tail is certainly long. Instead of 100 million miles (typical of a Solar System comet), it is 13 light years long! The star is moving fast, and it is ejecting gas, which is forming this tail. So this is a comet, in a planetary system where the central star is itself a comet.

This certainly has to be the largest comet ever discovered.

A comet's tail typically grows longer as it approaches the Sun due to the increasing heat causing more material to vaporize and stream away from the nucleus. As the comet moves away from the Sun in its orbit, the tail may become shorter or dissipate as the material cools and condenses. The tail's size varies depending on factors like the comet's distance from the Sun and the amount of volatile material within the comet.

Comets with extremely elliptical orbits like Hyakutake and Hale-Bopp are known as long-period comets. They have orbits that take them far out into the solar system, sometimes beyond the outer planets, before returning back towards the Sun. These comets can take decades or even centuries to complete a single orbit.

David Levy and Gene Shoemaker met when Levy was a young amateur astronomer and contacted Shoemaker to assist with his comet observations. Shoemaker recognized Levy's potential and mentored him in astronomy, leading to a successful collaboration on discovering comets together.