AST 111 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Kuiper Belt, Solar Wind, Jupiter Mass

• School: Tunxis Community College
• Department: Astronomy
• Course: AST 111
• Professor: Bourne

Document Summary

Coma = atmosphere that comes from a comet"s heated nucleus. Plasma tail = gas escaping from a coma, pushed by the solar wind. Growth of a tail as a comet"s orbit takes it on a passage into the inner ss: far from the sun, the nucleus is frozen then the nucleus warms, ice vaporizes into gas. The gas coma begins to form around the nucleus as the comet approaches the. The tails form by about 1au from the sun, pointing away from it. The dust tail is pushed by sun light, the plasma tail is swept back by solar wind. Larger particles are unaffected by sunlight or solar wind lastly, solar heating diminishes, and the coma and tail disappear between 3 and 5au from the sun. As a comet becomes active, comets eject small particles that follow the comet around in its orbit, and cause meteor showers when earth crosses the comet"s orbit.