SOLAR SYSTEM

Detailed explanation-1: -When comets come near the Sun, their tails become visible because heat from the Sun vaporizes some of the icy nucleus or head and sunlight reflects from the vapor. Solar wind pushes the vapor in a direction away from the Sun to form the comet’s tail.

Detailed explanation-2: -The ion tail is made up of ions (surprise!)-mostly CO+, N2+, CO2+. As the comet comes into the inner solar system, the Sun’s radiation heats up the nucleus, “boiling off” and ionizing these gases.

Detailed explanation-3: -Comets have two main tails, a dust tail and a plasma tail. The dust tail appears whitish-yellow because it is made up of tiny particles-about the size of particles of smoke-that reflect sunlight. Dust tails are typically between 1 and 10 million kilometers (about 600, 000 to 6 million miles) long.

Detailed explanation-4: -The Sun’s heat causes the comet’s ices to change to gases so the coma gets larger. The coma may extend hundreds of thousands of kilometers. The pressure of sunlight and high-speed solar particles (solar wind) can blow the coma dust and gas away from the Sun, sometimes forming a long, bright tail.

Detailed explanation-5: -Comets come from these areas, but we can only see them when their orbits bring them closer to the Sun. The heat from the Sun causes some of the dirty snow to vaporize, creating the fuzzy halo or “coma” of water vapor, dust and ice grains seen in comet images.

Detailed explanation-6: -Comets do not melt in the strict sense of becoming liquid. However, since they are composed partly of ice and other volatile compounds, they vaporize (turn directly to gas) when warmed in the vacuum of space by passing near the sun.