Crash Course - Comets

The coma of a comet is

- a cloud of gases outside the nucleus means hair in Latin - is produced by sublimating ices in the comet - grows as the comet gets nearer to the sun (all of the answers are correct)

The name of the ESA spacecraft that went into orbit around comet 67p, Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014 is called

Rosetta

Comets are made up of all of the following except

basaltic lava material

According to Phil, the ion tail can glow with different colors. A comet with a strikingly blue-colored ion tail probably has lots of ________________ in the tail.

carbon monoxide

Astronomers sometimes use this nickname for comets.

dirty snowball

The tail of the comet that is curved and more reflective is the

dust tail

This tail of the comet is very straight because it is being blown by the solar wind made of charged particles from the sun

ion tail

A comet which tends to orbit in the plane of our solar system, and has a period of less than 200 years is called a

short period comet

When a solid material like dry ice changes directly into a gas form, it is known as

sublimation

Phil explains why sending probes to visit comets is like a time machine.

the material has been preserved from the early time of the solar system