Comets :: essays research papers

COMETSComets bear been witnessed ever since man has been speculating about objects in the nighttime sky and erupt in records from the beginning of recorded civilization (Schweighauser 20). Comets are do up of four distinct features. The first is the nucleus. The nucleus is made up of arctic gases, mostly water vapor with lesser amounts of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, and imbedded in the frozen gases are interplanetary dust and tiny fragments of stony and bronze meteoric material. Some comets, the larger ones, have a nucleus of 10 kilometers (Schweighauser 22).The second feature of comets is the coma. The coma is composed of atoms and molecules of gas that travels with the nucleus. The coma whitethorn be up to 100,000 kilometers in diameter. The third feature of a comet is the encephalon. The head is just the name given to the coma and nucleus.The last of the features of the comet are the tails. roughly comets have two tails. One tail is made from dust particles and th e other, called ion tail, is made gases. As a comet approaches the sun, the frozen gas comes unfrozen which causes the dust particles to become free. Light pressure from the sun and some other forces cause these materials to escape away from the head of the comet and in the opposite direction from the sun. According to Charles A. Schweighauser in his book, entitled Astronomy from A to Z A Dictionary of gossamer Objects and Ideas, he states that we see comet heads and tails because they not only reflect sunlight, scarcely they also fluorescegive off their own lightwhen comets are near the sun. The tails from the comet may be up to 150 one million million million kilometers long each or together.Comets have a predictable orbit. thither are one thousand comets that have been charted. Some comets go by the sun once and others, which are called day-to-day comets, pass the sun repeatedly following a predicable pattern. I have chosen a periodic comet called Tempel-Tuttle. Ernst Wilhe lm Liebrecht Tempel and Horace Parnell Tuttle discovered this comet. This comet has been witnessed as early as 1366. The best apparition was that of 1366 when it passed 0.