Tag Archives: Comets

Comets and Their Periods

Comets are characterized by their highly eccentric orbits and incredibly long periods. Comet Swift-Tuttle, for example, has an orbital period of 133 years. This is comparable to the orbital period of the furthest planet from the Sun, Neptune, which has a period of 165 years. From our perspective on Earth, 150 years is a long […] Continue reading

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Comets

Comets are Kuiper Belt objects composed of chunks of rock and various ices. For the majority of their orbits they are a long way away from the Sun and don’t have the characteristic tail that we are used to seeing. However, as the comet dives back into the inner solar system, the radiation from the […] Continue reading

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The Kuiper Belt: Exploring New Horizons

Hello (again), and welcome (back) to my Astronomy Blog! Today’s post is about the Kuiper Belt and its objects.  What is the Kuiper Belt?  The Kuiper (Kai-per) Belt is a donut-shaped region beyond the orbit of Neptune. Within the Kuiper Belt, it is estimated that millions of icy objects (or even trillions of these objects, […] Continue reading

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comets

The terms ‘asteroid’ and ‘comet’ are often used interchangeably, but in reality there are important differences between the two! The primary difference is in their composition; asteroids are rocky because they formed in the inner Solar System, and comets are more icy because they formed beyond the frost line! Comets are visible every few years […] Continue reading

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There’s A Comet Coming Our Way!?!

As discussed in the textbook, most comets are not visible within Earth because they rarely pass through the inner solar system. Alternatively, they orbit the Sun within the Kuiper belt and Oort Cloud. Previously my knowledge of comet’s was bound to Halley’s comet, which is arguably one of the most famous of the comets to […] Continue reading

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Blog Post 5: Comets and their Tails

Comets are large balls of dust, rock, and ice that travel across our solar system and other solar systems. They are large like asteroids, around 10 km in diameter in our solar system. The largest one in our Solar System is Bernardinelli-Bernstein, a massive body about 85 miles in diameter. These objects can approach near […] Continue reading

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Kuiper Belt Objects

The Kuiper Belt is a region in the solar system beyond the orbit of Neptune as shown in the photo above. Although they have only scratched the surface, there has been about 2,000 objects discovered so far in the Kuiper belt. It is said to be filled with bits of rock and ice, along withContinue reading “Kuiper Belt Objects” Continue reading

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The Oort Cloud

The Oort Cloud is a collection of comets that orbit the Sun far outside our solar system. One estimation of the number of comets in the Oort Cloud is one TRILLION. Unlike the Kuiper Belt, which lies outside the orbit of Neptune, the Oort Cloud neither lies on the same plane as the bodies orbitingContinue reading “The Oort Cloud” Continue reading

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Comets: A Bunch of “Dirty Snowballs”

It is only right to dedicate a blog post to the very things that inspired my username: comets! Comets are small objects that orbit the Sun and tend to have more eccentric orbits than other bodies in the solar system. A comet consists of a nucleus, coma, ion tail, and dust tail. The nucleus is solidContinue reading “Comets: A Bunch of “Dirty Snowballs”” Continue reading

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Historical Views of Comets

According to NASA, comets are “frozen leftovers from the formation of the solar system composed of dust, rock and ices.  They range from a few miles to tens of miles wide, but as they orbit closer to the sun, they heat up and spew gases and dust into a glowing head that can be largerContinue reading “Historical Views of Comets” Continue reading

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