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COMETS

Submitted By
Ankita Priyadarshini Mohanty
B.Sc. final year
Roll no-31316004
Guided by –dr. c. r. Dwivedi
CONTENTS
 INTRODUCTION
 ORIGIN
 TYPES
 STRUCTURE
 parts
 HALLEY’S COMET
 CONCLUSION
What are Comets?

Comets are celestial bodies of small mass that
travel around the Sun, usually in elongated orbits.
They become visible as they near the Sun and
sometimes they form a visible tail.

This is an icy body that releases gas or dust.


They are often compared to dirty snowballs,
though recent research hassled some scientists to
call them snowy dirt balls.
Origin of comets
 Most comets come from the Oort cloud, the
spherical shell of trillions of icy bodies believed
to lie far beyond Pluto’s orbit to a distance of
about 150,000 AU.

Kuiper Belt
The Kuiper belt occasionally called the
Edgeworth Kuiper belt, is a circumstellar disc
in the outer, solar system extending from the
orbit of Neptune (at 30 AU) to approximately
50 AU from the sun.

. This is an area around the sun that extend up


to 30 to 100 AU.
Types of comets
Short Period Comets
Short period comets have an orbital period of
less than 200 years. 200 years sounds like a
long period but in cometary terms, this is quite
short.

The most famous short period comet is Comet


Halley with an orbital period of 75-76 years. It’s
thought that short period comets originate from
the Kuiper belt.

Long Period Comets


 Long period comets, on the other hand, are
thought to originate from the Oort cloud with
periods of over 200 years and at random
inclinations around the celestial sphere.
Structure of comet
A comet far from the sun consists of a dense
solid body or conglomerate of bodies a few
miles in diameter called the nucleus. As it
approaches the sun the nucleus becomes
enveloped by a luminous cloud of dust and
gases called the coma.

The nucleus consists of frozen water and


gases with particles of heavier substances
interspersed throughout, thus being in effect a
large, dirty snowball.
Parts of comet:
The Nucleus
The Nucleus essentially comprises the entire
comet when it is far from the sun, during which
time It is frozen.

The cold, solid nucleus warms as it approaches


the Sun and the comet begins to transform.
Expelled water, dust, gas and debris form a fuzzy
haze around the nucleus called the coma.

This happens when the comet is


about 7.5x10^8 km from the sun

The Coma

Expelled water, dust, gas and debris form a
fuzzy haze around the nucleus called the coma.

This happens when the comet is


about 7.5 x 10^8 km from the sun
The Dust Tail

As the nucleus and coma move closer to our
Sun, the comet continues its transformation into
one of the most breath-taking objects on our solar
system.

There can even be more than one


Dust tail.

Some ionized gases are pushed directly away


from the Sun by the Sun’s high speed solar wind.
These ionized gases form the comet’s blue, ion
tail.

Both the ion and dust tail(s) can be hundreds of


thousands or even millions of miles long.

The Ion Tail


Some ionized gases are pushed directly
away from the Sun by the Sun’s high speed
solar wind. These ionized gases form the
comet’s blue, ion tail.
 Both the ion and dust tail(s) can be hundreds
of thousands or even millions of miles long.
Halley’s comet
Halley's Comet or Comet Halley, officially
designated by Edmund Halley, is a short-
period comet visible from Earth every 75–76
years.

Halley is the only known short-period comet


that is regularly visible to the naked eye from
Earth, and the only naked-eye comet that
might appear twice in a human lifetime.

Halley last appeared in the inner parts of the


Solar System in 1986 and will next appear in
mid-2061.
Thank You

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