1. A comet has four components.

It has a nucleus, a coma, a dust tail, and an ion tail.

This is because they are composed mostly of ice, rock, gas, and dust. A comets nucleus is made of ice and can be as small as a few meters across to giant boulders a few kilometers across.

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These areas of space are way out in the solar system, far away from the Sun. The Oort cloud is so far away we have never even seen it!

Most take less than two hundred years to do so, and others travel much slower, potentially taking millions of years to complete an orbit.

As a comet gets closer to the Sun, it begins to experience heat. That causes some of its ices to sublimate. It turns the gas in the comet into a halo around it. The halo is known as the comets coma.

Its orbit makes it visible from Earth every 76 years. It was named after the British astronomer Edmond Halley.

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Scientists believe that there be up to one billion comets in our solar system.

A great comet is one that is bright enough to be visible from Earth without the need for a telescope. Approximately one great comet happens every ten years.

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Comets: Facts about the icy cosmic bodies you didnt know - News Landed