How do comets get their tails?
The vast majority of comets do not have tails, as they reside so far from the Sun that they are perpetually frozen. Only those few comets that enter the solar system grow tails. As the comet approaches the Sun its nucleusall the comet consists of when it is far away and frozenheats up. Some of the comets ice sublimates into gas, and the escaping gases carry along some dust. The gas and dust form a coma and two tails: a plasma tail of ionized gas and a dust tail. Larger particles can also escape, becoming the particles that cause meteors and meteor showers on Earth. • Where do comets come from? Comets that enter the solar system come from one of two reservoirs in the outer solar system: the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud. The Kuiper belt comets still reside in the region beyond Neptune in which they formed during the birth of the solar system. The Oort cloud comets are thought to have formed in the region of the jovian planets, and were kicked out to the great distance of the Oort cloud
