For other uses, see Comet (disambiguation).
Comets are small Solar System bodies that orbit the Sun and, when close enough to the Sun, exhibit a visible coma (atmosphere) or a tail — both primarily from the effects of solar radiation upon the comet's nucleus. Comet nuclei are themselves loose collections of ice, dust and small rocky particles, measuring a few kilometres or tens of kilometres across.
Comets have a variety of different orbital periods, ranging from a few years, to hundreds of thousands of years, while some are believed to pass through the inner Solar System only once before being thrown out into interstellar space. Short-period comets are thought to originate in the Kuiper Belt, or associated scattered disc,[1] which lie beyond the orbit of Neptune. Long-period comets are believed to originate at a very much greater distance from the Sun, in a cloud (the Oort cloud) consisting of debris left over from the condensation of the solar nebula. Comets are thrown from these outer reaches of the Solar System inwards towards the Sun by gravitational perturbations from the outer planets (in the case of Kuiper Belt objects) or nearby stars (in the case of Oort Cloud objects), or as a result of collisions.
Comets leave a trail of debris behind them. If the comet's path crosses Earth's path, then at that point may be meteor showers as the Earth passes through the trail of debris. The Perseid meteor shower occurs every year between August 9 and 13 when the Earth passes through the orbit of the comet Swift-Tuttle. Halley's comet is the source of the Orionid shower in October.
Comets are distinguished from asteroids by the presence of a coma or tail, though very old comets that have lost all their volatile materials may come to resemble asteroids.[2] Asteroids are also believed to have a different origin from comets, having formed in the inner Solar System rather than the outer Solar System.[3] Recent findings have, however, somewhat blurred the distinction between asteroids and comets;[4] see also Asteroid: Terminology.
There are a reported 3,475 known comets as of June 2008,[5] of which several hundred are short-period. This number is steadily increasing. However, this represents only a tiny fraction of the total potential comet population: the reservoir of comet-like bodies in the outer solar system may number one trillion.[6] The number of naked-eye comets averages to roughly one per year,[7] though many of these are faint and unspectacular. When a historically bright or notable naked-eye comet is witnessed by many people, it is often considered a Great comet.
The word "comet" came to the English language through Latin cometes from the Greek word komē, meaning "hair of the head"; Aristotle first used the derivation komētēs to depict comets as "stars with hair." The astronomical symbol for comets (☄) accordingly consists of a disc with a hairlike tail.
Comet nuclei are known to range from about 100 meters to 40+ kilometers across and are composed of rock, dust, water ice, and frozen gases such as carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, methane and ammonia.[8] They are often popularly described as "dirty snowballs", though recent observations have revealed dry dusty or rocky surfaces, suggesting that the ices are hidden beneath the crust (see Debate over comet composition). Comets also contain a variety of organic compounds; in addition to the gases already mentioned, these may include methanol, hydrogen cyanide, formaldehyde, ethanol and ethane, and perhaps more complex molecules such as long-chain hydrocarbons and amino acids.[9][10][11] Comet nuclei are irregularly shaped: they have insufficient mass (and hence gravity) to become spherical.
In the outer solar system, comets remain frozen and are extremely difficult or impossible to detect from Earth due to their small size (though some observations of comet nuclei in the Kuiper Belt have been made[12]). As a comet approaches the inner solar system, solar radiation causes the water, frozen gases and other volatile materials within the comet to vaporize and stream out of the nucleus, carrying dust away with them. The streams of dust and gas thus released form a huge, extremely tenuous atmosphere around the comet called the coma, and the force exerted on the coma by the Sun's radiation pressure and solar wind cause an enormous tail to form, which points away from the sun.
The streams of dust and gas each form their own distinct tail, pointing in slightly different directions. The tail of dust is left behind in the comet's orbit in such a manner that it often forms a curved tail. At the same time, the ion tail, made of gases, always points directly away from the Sun, as this gas is more strongly affected by the solar wind than is dust, following magnetic field lines rather than an orbital trajectory. While the solid nucleus of comets is generally less than 50 km across, the coma may be larger than the Sun, and ion tails have been observed to extend 1 astronomical unit (150 million km) or more.[13] Indeed it was the observation of anti-sunward orientated tails, by Ludwig Biermann, that contributed significantly to the discovery of the solar wind.[14]
The ion tail is formed as a result of the photoelectric effect of solar ultra-violet radiation acting on particles in the coma. Once the particles have been ionised, they attain a net positive electrical charge which in turn gives rise to an "induced magnetosphere" around the comet. The comet and it's induced magnetic field form an obstacle to outward flowing solar wind particles. As the relative orbital speed of the comet and the solar wind is supersonic a bow shock is formed upstream of the comet, in the flow direction of the solar wind. In this bow shock, large concentrations of cometary ions (called "pick up ions") congregate and act to "load" the solar magnetic field with plasma, such that the field lines "drape" around the comet forming the ion tail.[15]
