A comet, often known as a filthy snowball, is an ice mass coated with dust and tiny rocky fragments. The comet heats up and emits gases as it approaches the sun, a process known as outgassing. The so-called comet tail results from this.
There are 5 parts of a comet:
- The Nucleus, also known as the core, is a solid mass that is largely formed of ice and dust with a little black biological stuff thrown in. It is just a few kilometers broad.
- A comet's nucleus is surrounded by a spherical envelope of gas called the Coma, which is around a million kilometers large.
- The comet releases hydrogen as it absorbs UV radiation, which escapes the comet's gravity and forms the hydrogen cloud.
- the Dust Tail: The sun's radiation drives dust particles out of the coma. The tail so constantly faces away from the sun. The length of this tail might reach 10 million kilometers.
- the Ion Tail: Some cometary gases become ions when charged solar particles interact with them, creating an ion. The ion track, which is often smaller than the dust path, can be 100 million kilometers long.