• Question: how big is a comet

    Asked by chantalle to Ed, Katie, Sam, Steve, Vera on 21 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Sam Tazzyman

      Sam Tazzyman answered on 21 Jun 2011:

      I don’t know this at all, but Wikipedia says comets “range from about 100 meters to more than 40 kilometres across”.

    • Photo: Katie Marriott

      Katie Marriott answered on 21 Jun 2011:

      Comets can range from anything from the size of a golf ball to something bigger than the UK.

    • Photo: Vera Weisbecker

      Vera Weisbecker answered on 21 Jun 2011:

      Comets are just anything that hurtles through space, right? So there shouldn’t be a size limit?

    • Photo: Steven Daly

      Steven Daly answered on 21 Jun 2011:

      Comets are basically big dirty snowballs, mostly made of ice. They mostly come from something called the Oort cloud which surrounds our solar system. As has been said they can be pretty much any size, but they tend not to be much more than 100 km across. As they pass close to the sun they lose mass – that is what we see in their tail – and get smaller. Eventually they will be all gone.

      The debris that is int he tail of a comet is actually what causes meteor showers too.

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