Earth Sciences 1086F/G Lecture Notes - Lecture 18: Comet Nucleus, Volatiles, Solar System
30 Mar 2020
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Introduction: comets are small (but over 100m in diameter), mainly icy objects that streak through the solar. Ion tail - longer, blue-coloured, made of glowing gas: pushed straight away from the sun by the solar wind. Orbits: comets that survive a close encounter with the sun continue their journey along their highly elliptical orbits, many go beyond pluto, and spend most of their time in the kuiper belt. Long-period comets - take hundreds of thousands of years to complete a single orbit around the. Sun: the majority of comets, orbits exhibit all inclinations and orientations, both prograde and retrograde. Short-period comets - have orbital periods of 200 years or less: do not venture far beyond pluto, tend to have prograde orbits lying near the ecliptic. Long-period comets come from the oort cloud, a swarm of icy bodies orbiting the sun at a distance of more than a light-year. First proposed by frederick leonard and was unsupported.
