Скачать или смотреть Comets 101: Everything You Need To Know About Comets (in about a minute)

I have another astronomy video coming out in two days(??? maybe a bit later?) so stay tuned for that!

A comet is made up of four basic parts:

The nucleus is the main part of the comet. It’s basically the chunk of rock, ice, and dust that flies around in space. When the comet approaches the sun, the immense heat from our favorite star melts those particles. Which forms the coma.

The coma is the area surrounding the nucleus. It’s much bigger than the nucleus. While the nucleus is only about 10 km across, the coma is 100,000 times the size at being 1 million km across. It’s made up of water vapor, CO2, and other gases.

Trailing behind the nucleus and coma are the two tails. The ion tail and the dust tail. They are both massive, ranging from 100 million km to 250 million km long. The tails always face away from the sun because the solar wind is constantly pushing them away. And they always follow the coma because it’s made up of evaporated parts of the nucleus. The ion tail (aka plasma tail) is made up of ions, and the dust tail is made up of microscopic dust particles.

The dust tail grows bigger the closer to the sun it gets. And while the measurements are different for each comet, it’s about 10 million km across the nucleus and 100 million km long.