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Asked by arianarose3 to Ed, Katie, Sam, Steve, Vera on 21 Jun 2011.
Question: What is a commet?
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Sam Tazzyman answered on 21 Jun 2011:
It’s a lump of ice, dust, and bits of rock that orbits around the Sun, and has a tail of bits of dust and water that come off of it.
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Steven Daly answered on 21 Jun 2011:
I posted this in a similar question:
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.
Comments
ruella commented on :
no comets will hit earth I think bcas I think positive