0
Comets
Comets are small solar system bodies that orbit around the Sun. They have a tail (trail of light) when traveling in space.
1,186 Questions
Why is the Vomit Comet important to the training of astronauts?
Here on Earth, we live in a gravity field that is one G, or "earth-normal gravity". We evolved here, and we expect this. In free-fall, there is no apparent gravity, no feeling of weight. (Gravity still affects everything, but if you aren't resisting gravity, you don't FEEL gravity.)
Some people are prone to drop-sickness, and are prone to lose their lunches in free-fall. The parabolic flight path of the "Vomit comet" gives you a couple of minutes of free-fall, so that you can get used to the feeling.
How does a comet create a meteor?
Cosmic blobs of gas collapse in on themselves to form stars and planets.
Bands of dust which were not captured by any of the planets fell together under their own gravity to form the bodies of asteroids and comets. "Leftover" chunks of rock, basically.
When an asteroid, comet, or other such debris falls through he atmosphere we call it a meteor. If any solid part of it lands on earth, it is called a "meteorite".
Jan Hendrik Oort suggested that comets come from the Oort Cloud. This is sometimes called the Oort Hypothesis.
The nucleus is the bulk of the comet, this is present all the time until it eventually breaks up after many orbits. close to the sun, it gives of two tails as the sun heats the comets surface. Far from the sun it would just look like a rock that also contains a high proportion of ice.
If a comets ion tail is pointing perpendicular to its direction of travel the comet is?
Close to or at perihelion.
When will halleys comet be visible by the naked eye?
In the year 2061 it is scheduled to pass by earth.
What is the meaning of the Comet in the Masonic Organization?
In Freemasonry, the comet symbolizes fleeting time, the passing of life, and the importance of making the most of our time on Earth. It serves as a reminder of the impermanence of life and the need to strive for personal improvement and enlightenment.
Why was comet halley named after Edmund halley?
Comet Halley was named after Edmund Halley because he was the first person to predict its return. Halley calculated its orbit in 1705 and predicted it would return in 1758, after his death. When the comet indeed reappeared in 1758, it was named in his honor.
Why do comets have long trails?
Comets have been compared to "dirty snowballs", made of rocks and dust held together with frozen gasses. When a comet starts to come near the Sun, the sunlight begins to heat it up, vaporizing some of the frozen gasses. The dust in the ice is carried away with the vapor, and the light pressure from the Sun pushes the very light dust and vapor away from the comet's nucleus. The light illuminates the dusty vapor, and we see the comet's tail begin to grow as the comet comes closer to the Sun.
The length of the tail is dependent on the nature of the frozen gasses, and on how much dust the tail carries away, and on how close the comet comes to the Sun. Some comets don't come especially close to the Sun, while some come VERY close. And some comets fall into the Sun completely. (The size of any comet is so tiny compared to the size of the Sun that a comet-Sun collision has no effect on the Sun at all. It would have less impact than the force of a mosquito hitting the windshield of a train.)
There are plenty of famous meteors, to know which one specifically you are speaking about, I would need a name. The most famous is probably the one that many believe killed all the dinosaurs. This meteor is estimated to be about 6 miles wide, and created a crater about 110 miles across. Many believe that the Chicxulub Crater in Yucatan, Mexico is this meteor.
1, The 11 year solar cycle varies the volume of charged particles emitted by the sun. In other words, the solar wind is not constant.
2, The time of year, whether the northern hemisphere is pointed toward or away from the sun. In NH summer, the NH points toward the sun so the interaction between the atmosphere is more excited but, the nights are much shorter and, in fact non-existant for several weeks. so total out put is low. In NH winter, the NH points away from the sun so the light is less bright but it lasts much longer because the sky is dark for weeks.
3. The latitude: The magnetic field is stronger closer to the poles. Sometimes the aurorae can be seen further south when solar flare activity is high.
How do comets become electrical?
Comets become electrical as they pass nearby the sun. The electrically charged ions form a tail on the comet that helps to propel it away from the sun.
What is the next year that Haley's comet will be visible from earth without the use of a telescope?
Next appear in mid-2061
What questions did Edmond Halley ask?
Halley was interested in stars and in gravity. He calculated the orbits of comets. He also published a paper on the age people lived to have actuary tables for insurance.
What is the orbit length of Halley's Comet?
The largest OBJECT ever to hit the Earth was probably the proto-planet Theia that we believe collided with the proto-Earth, the debris from which formed the Moon. That probably was not a comet. Theia may have been as large as the planet Mars.
Beyond that, we really don't know. There isn't any way to determine, 65 million years after the fact, whether the impactor that probably caused the K-T extinctions and killed off the dinosaurs was really a comet, or an asteroid; perhaps it doesn't really matter. That object may have been as large as 10 miles in diameter. And we don't really KNOW the cause of the Great Permian Extinction 252 million years ago; it may have been an impact event, or there may have been other causes for the destruction of perhaps 95% of all life on Earth.
We believe that during the first couple of million years of Earth's existence, it probably suffered a great number of quite massive impacts, but we do not (as yet) have any detailed information about the early history of our planet.
Which comet appears every 10000 years?
There are no known periodic comets with periods near 10K years.
How far is Halleys comet from the sun?
A comet's orbit around the Sun is pretty predictable, but its appearance depends on the structure of the ice and rocks below the surface, and we do not know these things. As the ice begins to melt, the structure of the comet and the distribution of frozen gasses can cause the comet to appear a little different each day.
What is the name of a comet that comes every 76 years?
I think it called Halley's comet, someone called Halley discovered it trails.
When does Hailey's comet return to the inner solar system?
It would be HIGHLY unlikely; Halley's Comet doesn't intersect Earth's orbital path at any point. It's possible that someday in the distant future Halley's Comet might get close enough to Jupiter or Saturn to be tugged into a collision orbit, but at the moment we see no chance that this will happen.
It would be far more likely for Earth to be hit by some comet or asteroid that we are entirely unaware of, coming from deep space.
Will the Apophis "God of Chaos" asteroid hit the Earth in 2029?
Nothing is 100 percent guaranteed in astronomy, but scientists don’t expect the asteroid 99942-Apophis to come into contact with the Earth (or any other celestial bodies in our solar system, for that matter).
A blog post from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) at the California Institute of Technology notes that on Friday, April 13, 2029, 99942-Apophis will “cruise harmlessly by Earth, about 19,000 miles (31,000 kilometers) above the surface.”
You read that right: An asteroid will come incredibly close to the Earth on Friday the 13th. If you’re superstitious, that seems like bad news, but astronomers aren’t worried.
“That’s within the distance [of] some of our spacecraft that orbit Earth,” the blog notes. “The international asteroid research community couldn't be more excited.”
Note that they use the word “excited,” not “terrified.”
"The Apophis close approach in 2029 will be an incredible opportunity for science," Marina Brozović, a radar scientist at JPL, said in a statement. "We'll observe the asteroid with both optical and radar telescopes. With radar observations, we might be able to see surface details that are only a few meters in size."
Without radar, telescopes, or other tools, Apophis will still be impressive. It will be visible to the naked eye and will look like a star moving across the sky. From our perspective, it will become visible above Australia, then move across the Atlantic Ocean, reaching the U.S. West Coast in the early hours of the evening.
Apophis was discovered in June 2004, and later that year, a group of Australian astronomers spotted it a second time and calculated a 2.7 percent chance of a collision with Earth. However, subsequent calculations have ruled out that possibility for the 2029 flyby.
What about future flybys? Speaking to Newsweek, astronomer Davide Farnocchia put the chances of a collision after 2060 at “less than 1 in 100,000.” That’s still incredibly close by the standards of astronomy, but it’s not something to worry about.
If Apophis did come into contact with Earth, it could cause devastating damage, but at 1,110-feet wide, it’s not large enough to cause a global extinction. Asteroids only pose an existential threat to life on Earth when they’re several miles wide; at those sizes, they could throw up enough dust from the planet’s surface to block out sunlight, preventing plant growth and causing global temperature changes. Scientists believe that the object that contributed to the extinction of dinosaurs was about seven to eight miles wide.
Apophis isn’t a threat at all—at least, it won’t be in 2029. If you’ve got clear skies that night, count yourself lucky and watch the show (and don’t worry about taking out extra insurance).
Halley's Comet actually comes around every year. Humans enjoy loooking at the beautiful light show. The reason why Halley's Comet is so famous is that light show was the first comet seen that was reecorded.
