That's one big, dirty snowball. This one was created on Earth. There is another type of dirty snowball, and that can be found in space. They are commonly referred to as comets. This is a picture of Halley's Comet as photographed May 8, 1910, by Dr. G.W. Ritchey using the 60-inch (1.5-meter) telescope at Mount Wilson Observatory, Calif., during the comet's last appearance. The head of the comet and the beginning of its long tail are shown. Short, straight streaks are background stars. Credit: NASA/JPL This is a comet. It is a celestial object in our solar system that is made of ice, dust, methane, ammonia, carbon dioxide and other gases. Scientists believe comets can give us clues to the origin of our solar system. It is thought that comets hold materials that were created 4.5 billion years ago when our solar system was forming. In fact in 2014 a group of Swedish scientists landed a probe on a comet. This is called the Rosetta mission. These are some pictures of the comet they landed on...Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. On November 14, 2014 the probe called Philea tried to land on the comet. There was a set back and the probe bounced twice before coming to a stop in a shadowed part of the comet. The probe runs on solar batteries and quickly went silent, running out of energy. When the comet approached the Sun, the batteries loaded up, Philea woke up for a short time then went out forever. Rosetta went by in September 2016 and took these fascinating shots of a real, live, comet traveling through space before plunging into the comet where it went silent as the comet traveled into outer reaches of the solar system where powering solar panels is not possible. Okay, I'm just WAYYY impressed that anyone could land anything on a comet?? That's crazy!? This comet orbits the Sun between Earth and Jupiter and passes the Sun every 6.5 years making it the perfect comet to explore. A comet has a solid rocky core, surrounded by ice. The ice could be water, but it probably contains other elements like methane and ammonia. As the comet gets closer to the sun, the ice surrounding the comet turns to gas and forms a tail. This is called a coma. The photons from the Sun react with the comet's coma turning the elements into ions, making the tail an "ion tail". Comet tails always spray away from the Sun because of all the photons bombarding the comet. Sometimes the tail of a comet will spray planets as it travels by. Some comets come so close to the Sun that they will vaporize completely. Then there are other comets that just keep coming back to give us a show every so many years. Some are lots of years apart and we may only see them once in a lifetime. Comet, dirty snowball in space, snowy dirtballs, whatever they are called. Holy moley! They are crazy cool!
5 Comments
OLIVER ROPER
1/11/2019 07:00:47 pm
Whoever did the math for the probe landing on the comet is pretty LIT. he he ehehe ehe
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Quinton
1/12/2019 03:45:33 pm
these are pretty cool comets
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Michael Mandaa
1/13/2019 01:47:57 pm
not ice, drool
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ian
1/13/2019 08:06:39 pm
so are we supposed to do a comment on a comet
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Zach
1/13/2019 08:58:49 pm
Those comets are cool. Are we going to learn about the comets more?
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Mrs. TaylorI love science! Everything about the world is interesting and never boring. I love to study plants, animals, insects, and people. My favorite subjects are my students who are the most unique organisms on the planet! Categories |