What are comets? What are they made of?
Comets are basically dusty snowballs which orbit the Sun. They are a combination of ices, such as water, carbon dioxide, ammonia and methane, mixed with dust. These materials originated from the time that our solar system was formed. Comets have an icy nucleus surrounded by a large cloud of gas and dust (called the coma). The coma is created as the ice in the nucleus is warmed by the Sun and vaporizes. Comets can develop 2 tails as they travel closer to the Sun, a straight gas tail and a curved dust tail. The gas tail is created by the solar wind, whose magnetic fields pull the gas away from the comet’s coma. The dust in the coma is not affected by magnetic fields but is vaporized by the Sun’s heat, and forms a curved tail due to the comet’s orbit.
