Comets Comets are frozen leftovers from the formation of the solar system composed of dust, rock, and ices. They range from a few miles to tens of miles wide, but as they orbit closer to the Sun, they heat up and spew gases and dust into a glowing head that can be larger than a planet. This material forms a tail that stretches millions of miles. Comets are cosmic snowballs of frozen gases, rock, and dust that orbit the Sun. When frozen, they are the size of a small town. When a comet's orbit brings it close to the Sun, it heats up and spews dust and gases into a giant glowing head larger than most planets. The dust and gases form a tail that stretches away from the Sun for millions of miles. There are likely billions of comets orbiting our Sun in the Kuiper Belt and even more distant Oort Cloud. The current number of known comets is: 3,743 Prince said another opportunity to locate the comet in the sky will come on February 10, when it passes close to Mars. - 'Rare visitor' - The comet has spent most of its life "at least 2,500 times more distant than the Earth is from the Sun", Prince said. Biver said the comet was believed to have come from the Oort Cloud, a theorised vast sphere surrounding the Solar System that is home to mysterious icy objects. The last time the comet passed Earth was during the Upper Paleolithic period, when Neanderthals still roamed Earth. Prince said the comet's next visit to the inner Solar System was expected in another 50,000 years. But Biver said there was a possibility that after this visit the comet will be "permanently ejected from the Solar System". Among those closely watching will be the James Webb Space Telescope. However, it will not take images, instead studying the comet's composition, Biver said. The closer the comet is to Earth, the easier it is for telescopes to measure its composition "as the Sun boils off its outer layers", Prince said. This "rare visitor" will give "us information about the inhabitants of our Solar system well beyond the most distant planets", he added. READ MORE ON SOLAR SYSTEMEARTHBIVERSUNURSA MAJORPARIS OBSERVATORYTHOMAS PRINCEMOONNORTHERN HEMISPHERECOMET (Catch all the Business News, Breaking News Events and Latest News Updates on The Economic Times.)… More Amazon Weekend Offers | Bumper discounts on Electronics, Appliances, Fashion, Kitchen & more... Amazon Weekend Offers | Bumper discounts on Electronics, Appliances, Fashion, Kitchen & more... NEXT STORY SCIENCE READ ON APP Hubble finds ghost light among galaxies stretches far back in time ANI Synopsis Intracluster light was first detected in the Coma cluster of galaxies in 1951 by Fritz Zwicky, who reported that one of his most interesting discoveries was observing luminous, faint intergalactic matter in the cluster. Because the Coma cluster, containing at least 1,000 galaxies, is one of the nearest clusters to Earth (330 million light-years), Zwicky was able to detect the ghost light even with a modest 18-inch telescope. By ANILast Updated: Jan 05, 2023, 08:04 PM IST In giant clusters of hundreds or thousands of galaxies, innumerable stars wander like lost souls, emitting a ghostly haze of light. These stars are not gravitationally tied to any one galaxy in a cluster. ADVERTISEMENT The nagging question for astronomers has been: how did the stars get so scattered throughout the cluster in the first place? Several competing theories include the possibility that the stars were stripped out of a cluster's galaxies, or they were tossed around after mergers of galaxies, or they were present early in a cluster's formative years many billions of years ago. A recent infrared survey from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, which looked for this so-called 'intracluster light', sheds new light on the mystery. The new Hubble observations suggest that these stars have been wandering around for billions of years, and are not a product of more recent dynamical activity inside a galaxy cluster that would strip them out of normal galaxies. #space #universe #astroids #comets #earth #comet #50000 #years #february #space #fact #shorts #earth #universe #blackhole #sun #mars #spacefact #star #comet ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uas2-kmf7IY