comet

comet A small body, composed of ice and dust, in orbit around the Sun. The name derives from the Greek kometes, meaning ‘long-haired’. Comets are thought to exist in vast numbers in the Oort Cloud and Kuiper Belt, beyond the planets. From there they can be perturbed by the gravitational influence of passing stars into new orbits that bring them into the inner Solar System, where they become visible from Earth. When a comet is far from the Sun its nucleus is frozen solid and shines only by reflecting sunlight. As the nucleus nears the Sun it heats up and releases gas and dust, forming first a coma and, in some cases, a tail (see coma, cometary; nucleus, cometary; tail, cometary). The gas becomes ionized and emits light. Whereas the nucleus may be only 1 km or so across, the coma can extend for 10⁵ km or more from the nucleus and the tail for 10⁸ km}. Around the visible coma is an even larger cloud of hydrogen, detectable at ultraviolet wavelengths. Despite their size, a comet's coma and tail are of such low density that background stars can be seen through them. The mass of a typical comet is perhaps 10¹⁴ kg}.

 Each year over 100 comets are seen from Earth through telescopes; only a few ever become bright enough to be visible with the naked eye. Perhaps half are periodic comets, either new discoveries or known objects following predicted orbits. The most famous of these, and the brightest, is Halley's Comet. The remainder are new long-period comets appearing for the first time, with orbital periods of over 200 years. At the end of 2006 some 2500 comets were known, of which about 85% are long-period comets. During their passage through the inner Solar System comets can have their orbits altered by the gravitational influence of the planets, notably Jupiter. One spectacular example was Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9, which hit Jupiter in 1994.

 Some comets are discovered by amateur astronomers conducting deliberate searches, but most are found on images taken by professional astronomers; recently, over a hundred comets a year passing close to the Sun have been found on images taken by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). Comets are named after their discoverers (now usually restricted to two names), or the spacecraft or survey which found them, and are also assigned a designation based on when they were discovered. According to a convention introduced in 1995, comets are identified by the year and a letter indicating the half-month in which they were discovered, plus the order of discovery in that half-month (e.g. C/1999 D3 would be the third comet discovered during the second half of 1999February). The names of periodic comets are preceded by P/ and a number indicating the order in which their periodicity was established (e.g. 1P/Halley, 2P/Encke). Comets that are defunct–either observed to have disintegrated or simply disappeared–are given the prefix D/ (e.g. 3D/Biela, D/1993 F2 Shoemaker–Levy). Comets for which there are insufficient observations to calculate an orbit are given the prefix X/.

 Comets are believed to be icy planetesimals left over from the formation of the outer planets. The total population of the Oort Cloud and Kuiper Belt may be 10¹² objects, with a combined mass greater than the Earth. The main component of cometary ice is frozen water, plus some methane (CH₄), carbon monoxide (CO), and carbon dioxide (CO₂). Several other carbon-containing molecules have also been detected, including formaldehyde (H₂CO), hydrogen cyanide (HCN), and methyl cyanide (CH₃CN). These same molecules are also found in interstellar nebulae, similar to the nebula from which the Solar System formed. Small (less than 1 mm) dust particles released from comets around perihelion contribute to the inner Solar System's zodiacal dust cloud. Larger dust particles, of millimetre and centimetre size, from periodic comets give rise to meteor streams.