Comets by Rebecca James

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Slide Notes

Comets

Published on Nov 18, 2015

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PRESENTATION OUTLINE

COMETS

BY: REBECCA JAMES

Comets are small balls of ice and dust. They are made in the Kuiper Belt or Oort Cloud. After that they find their way to the Sun and they begin to orbit it.

A comet gets its tail when the Sun turns the water in it into a gas and when the dust flies off it creates a tail. A comet has 2 tails one is the dust trail, which we can see because the light from the Sun is reflecting off of it. The other tail is the plasma tail, which we cannot see from Earth.

There are 3 different types of comets. Some comets are short period comets, which means they only take 20 or less days to orbit the Sun. Other comets are long period comets, which means that they take 200 or more days to orbit the Sun. The last type of comet is the Halley-type comet. This comet takes between 20 and 200 days to fully orbit the Sun.

Comets have lots of water inside of them so it is possible that comet collisions could've brought water to Earth and even filled our oceans. Research shows that comets could've also brought 22 trillion pounds of organic matter to Earth!

Photo by NASASolarSystem

Did you know that comets have their own atmosphere? Well, it's true. If you have ever seen a comet, the fuzzy cloud around it is called a coma. When the comet gets close to the Sun its ice becomes a gas and it spreads out from its body, creating a thin atmosphere. A comet's atmosphere can become more than 60,000 miles in diameter.

Photo by Michael Karrer

Lots of superstitions were made by comets. Some people thought that comets were signs of good luck and others thought they were signs of bad luck. Roman Emperor Nero thought a comet had predicted his murder so he killed all his successors. On the other hand, William the Conqueror thought a comet was a good sign, before his invasion of England in 1066.

Comets also create meteor showers. While a comet is orbiting the sun, it sheds rocks that turn into a meteor stream. We see a meteor shower when Earth passes through the stream. Comets also drop almost 1 billion dust particles on Earth per second.

Just like humans, comets can die. This happens when they lose their important materials and break into smaller pieces. They can also die when they get too close to the Sun and bream into smaller pieces.

So, a comet's life starts in the Kuiper Belt or Oort Cloud and ends at the Sun.

Rebecca James